4 Levels of Bloody Mary: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

hi i'm steven and i'm a level one chef hi i'm julie and i'm a level two chef i'm jeff and i'm the 2020 recipient of the nobel prize in cocktail biophysics i'm kidding i'm just a bartender i've never had a bloody mary so i'm very excited to try it because i've only heard mixed reviews and i'm making a mixed drink the last time i had a bloody mary hmm what day is it no actually it was saturday i have them generally on the weekends when i'm having a lovely luxurious brunch so for my bloody mary i'm going italian i'm gonna do a southern italian kind of coastal refreshing version of the drink using all italian ingredients we're going to start with our tomato base and i personally love v8 i don't like tomato juice flat bland blah i'm liking the simplicity of this drink all you have to do is add the tomato juice i gotta be honest that's for amateurs instead of using tomato juice or a bloody mary mix we're going to use the reserved juices from a can of italian san marzano tomatoes i buy the low sodium because you know health about two cups i feel like this a lot i'm gonna go with four i like to just poke a tiny hole with my thumb into the tomato so that the entire thing doesn't burst when i'm squeezing it and then pour the remaining juice i'm not the biggest fan of tomato juice unless it's like tomato soup you got tomato soup let's warm this up so i'm going to just stir this and we'll get that combined with the juices that just strain through the tomatoes so now we have the tomato base for the cocktail this seems very simple but remember this is a base this is our jumping off point for the alcohol we're going to go with some tequila that's what makes it the maria the traditional base is vodka but you can swap the vodka out for tequila and then you have a bloody maria i like tito's vodka it's smooth it's nice it's fun it's affordable i kind of steep my vodka in a little teeny sliver of scotch bonnet this is super super spicy and i don't want to kill anyone and i am simply going to put that one little sliver in the bottom of my shaker so i'm going to be using vodka as the alcohol base in my bloody mary but i'm going to infuse a couple of italian flavor components in there i'm going to be adding rosemary i'm going to emphasize the rosemary's floral quality by adding some pink peppercorn and really all you need is thyme now to speed up the infusion process i'm going to use a sous-vide machine which gets this two to five day process done in about two and a half to three hours i've set the sous-vide machine to 130 degrees fahrenheit so now all we have to do is wait so i'm just going to stare at this machine oh you're gonna ask me how much vodka a lot uh we're gonna go with i can't sell the out who am i kidding i'm gonna fill it to the top regardless of how big it is just let this sit and infuse and impart all that heat good heat all right it's been three hours and this infusion is done and the rosemary's given the vodka infusion a really nice color just a sign that it worked but we should give it a taste and make sure and you can just smell the rosemary right off the bat which is great amazing amazing what time is it happy hour somewhere so instead of drinking this whole thing straight we're going to strain the rosemary and peppercorns out of the infusion and there we have it a beautiful rosemary pink peppercorn vodka infusion this is looking pretty good this is smelling pretty good so next up flavorings the first thing we do is cut a little knob of this horseradish i can't tell you exactly how much i use because i like things over the top spicy instead of worcestershire sauce i'm going to be using fresh garlic roasted red peppers and anchovy paste so i'm going to put all the ingredients for my pesto sure sauce you know like an it's like an italian worcestershire into the blender and blend it up so into the blender with 200 grams of jarred fire roasted red peppers and two calabrian chilies with a tablespoon of the olive oil that they're packed in just gonna take off the stem first one clove of garlic smashed uh about 20 grams of this anchovy paste you really don't taste the fishiness itself it's more just the kind of funk that you get from worcestershire sauce and always try to get fresh horse radish there's so much extra heat that using fresh horse radish brings out that you just don't get in the jarred prepared horseradish and you want that little bite it's really hard to say fresh horseradish say that five times fast you're better than me fresh fresh fresh horseradish horseradish the great part is that if you have this horseradish root you can trick people into thinking that it's like fresh parmesan and put it on their pasta it's like when you have those italian restaurants with the parmesan cheese that's what i do because i hate my friends looking for about uh 20 grams here which is a nice solid handful next i add my worcestershire sauce worcestershire worcestershire i need an adult fresh horseradish all right so put the top on and blend well start at the low setting work your way up to high [Music] great and we're looking for a really uniform consistency here this is just transferring this into a smaller vessel for easy measuring next we're going to put the juice of one whole lime and you want to make sure you didn't drink any of that tequila beforehand because then you would have one hand and then i'm just going to squeeze it in that's why they got me this squish first time using this thing too like i'm from the caribbean we just squeeze things with our hands that's how i was taught growing up just use that spoon no one has really criticized me but i know it's not the quote-unquote pro way to do things next we're gonna go with some celery salt and then we're going to crack some black pepper into it and we definitely can use the salt now this is pink himalayan sea salt so we're going to add five drops of hot sauce so i guess we're doing 15 now somebody count that write it in the comments the lemon and cucumber are going to be muddled into the drink and this will be nice because it'll both get a little bit of lemon essential oil kind of muddled out of the drink into the shaker and you get a real fresh lemon hit and then you also get the juiciness of the cucumber right before you shake that drink next up ice if you have great booze and great ingredients and then you just add kind of smelly refrigerator freezer ice to your drink it just kind of takes away all the great work that you just did i don't know how we became so obsessed with ice i'm using water that has been frozen actually i have my water that is filtered into my refrigerator from fiji islands this slab of ice was made in a professional facility most major cities have ice companies that make ice for cocktails and they'd be more than happy to supply you with a slab for your home i live in the world i have an ice maker i use the ice that comes out of my ice maker the first thing i'm going to do is let the slab temper at room temperature for about 45 minutes and then we can cut some ice i think i put about four cubes in there and that's going to be it you don't need a lot of ice for a bloody mary save it for a margarita i'm a margarita girl so this has been sitting out for 45 minutes and it is wonderfully clear now we can score the ice without the ice kind of breaking into unpredictable shapes just easier to manage and you just need to get down there a little bit so that the ice has a good fault line and then i'm just going to tap lightly on the knife up and down the ice until it breaks apart from this smaller piece you can cut this down to size to use in all different kinds of drinks so this is about all the ice we're going to need and we're going to hand crack these little chunks into irregular shape sizes right before we shake the drink so now all we have to do is mix it up i just love to make my bloody mary mix in this picture because it reminds me of the times that i spent in france cafe du palui as you can see so we're going to start by modeling our lemon wedges and cucumber slices outs and a half of our san marzano tomato juice just a few really strong presses we'll do it so we're just going to add three quarters of an ounce of our pasta sauce pinch of kosher salt and two ounces of our pink peppercorn rosemary vodka infusion so now i'm going to use this contraption which could be used to like hold off those people that judge you as you drink at 12 o'clock noon or to mix up your bloody mary always stir it up right before you put it into your shaker pour to the top shake gently you're not dancing you're swaying and now the ice i like these kind of big shards inevitably a couple of them will kind of stick out of the glass so look like a glacier and it'll be all cool and stuff this is perfect right up to the top of the shaker you know that you'll have enough ice to fill your glass i'm excited because just because it's not appealing to the eye doesn't mean it's not appealing to the stomach that's philosophy we're going to shake this drink on the cracked ice just 10 to 12 nice firm shakes i think that should be enough because everything feels nice and chilly so we're starting off with a very chilled glass this is again about making your drink as cold as possible as long as possible and poor ice is floating up in all of its little weird pieces we're in good shape now we just have to garnish it so in front of me you can see my pickled veggie bar don't know where to start the first thing i'm going to do is rim my glass with salt the way i like to do that is just rub the lime around the lip of the glass and now we're gonna add two cubes of ice this is really where bartenders and chefs like to get creative i've seen people have entire grilled shrimp skewers i've seen people skewer double cheeseburgers into a giant bloody mary and stick them in i have had bloody marys with umbrellas and burgers and fries and all kinds of things coming out of them i like to keep things simple just a blowtorch i'm going to flame a rosemary sprig so the aroma hits you right as you're drinking it and it also brings out the rosemary and the vodka so i'm gonna go with the pepperoncini first and i'm gonna rip it open to expose some of the juices i'm going to grab the caper berry i'm also going to take out this step i want to put the pickle in and you want to dip it in like your toes at the beach or just jump in a bloody mary is not a bloody mary unless it is ridiculously overstuffed with things we're going to put a stalk of celery and then i want to grab one of the spanish olives wow that's a little kick and i'm going to finish it with another spanish olive and you said but julia you haven't put the booze in yet no i have not i am dressing the set before the actor arrives this is a staple in the jamaican household it would be a shame if i didn't add this okra you see and it worked black pepper right on the ice glacier a drizzle of nice aged balsamic vinegar and a rosemary sprig but first [Applause] you're not allowed to enjoy yourself while this is happening at all totally chilly just an incredible smoky drink we've got a fancy schmancy metal straw and what i'm going to do is impale one two three blue cheese stuffed olives just one more little sway not shake and pour and this is my bloody mary aka my bloody maria my lunchtime bloody mary and here's my bloody mary all right we're done so it's time to taste oh man that that is terrific is what that is i think we're just in two different places in our lives i don't think we're on the same page spiritually um but it's not the drink it might just be where i am so i'm just gonna need this to exit stage left that's good i'm chewing so that means it's healthy and i'm sipping that means i'm going to be drunk soon what could be so wrong i'm kind of proud of myself i'll say it there's this really excellent acidity and just a little bit of a kind of a savory twang and it's from that anchovy so what'd steven think of the bloody mary do you like it thumbs down a bloody mary is a chemically complex drink that covers a wide range of tastes and flavors it can be slightly sweet salty sour and savory you can make it exactly as you like it let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs steven used classic tomato juice in his bloody mary tomato juice is a weak particulate gel made up of pulp particles suspended in a liquid that contains sugar salt and other compounds the compounds are prone to separate over time as the result of gravity acting on weak bonds between the components you don't want your juice to separate in your bloody mary so mixing just prior to drinking is key i'm not the biggest fan of tomato juice julie used v8 in her bloody mary v8 is a tomato-based juice with added vegetables like carrots celery beets and spinach and added fruits like blueberries mangoes and strawberries v8 can't afford me so they are not paying me v8 is red like classic tomato juice because of the presence of dominant antioxidant pigments lutein and lycopene jeff crushed and strained his san marzano tomatoes which are naturally higher in sugar than other tomato cultivar varieties hand crushing gently releases tomato juices from the tomato cells while partially breaking cell walls into pieces these become suspended in the tomato juice and block its flow which is how the juice becomes viscous i'm very used to having a sieve in front of me julie added spicy heat from the capsaicinoids in a thin sliver of a scotch bonnet pepper and allele isothiocyanates in the freshly grated horseradish these are two different chemicals that yield a similar fiery heat with a big impact at low concentrations i'm of jamaican heritage we grew up eating them almost like candy freshly grated horseradish is extremely spicy compared to the prepared horseradish that steven used prepared horseradish has stabilizers like sodium benzoate which is stable at low ph and extends the horseradish shelf life in the presence of vinegar it also helped to mute the heat in his bloody mary jeff made his own pesticide sauce with blended roasted red peppers calabrian chili with oil garlic and anchovy paste and fresh horseradish the small amount of oil from the calabrian chili needed to be emulsified in order to prevent the juice from separating thankfully some of the proteins in the anchovy paste have emulsification properties they help to keep jeff's juice stable while adding a salty briny flavor as well there's fish in all bloody marys deal with it anchovy is an ingredient in worcestershire sauce which is a classic bloody mary edition by including it jeff kept a traditional ingredient in his recipe but in a non-traditional way all three of our chefs used clear distilled spirits to retain the signature red color of their bloody marys steven used tequila which is distilled from agave a succulent plant that resembles a cactus the plant is rich in fructose a sweet simple sugar that adds to its characteristic flavor it needs more tequila julie used vodka which is made from a distilled starch sometimes grains sometimes potatoes sometimes sugar beets the source of the fermented substrate is not all that important since it's distilled and heavily filtered resulting in a very neutral flavor using a simple vodka is an excellent choice because it allows the drinks other intense flavors to take center stage i like tito's because it's organic i love the name tito and it's vodka jeff infused his vodka with pink peppercorns and rosemary alcohol is an organic solvent and can extract some flavoring compounds from the rosemary and pink peppercorns to add layers of flavor to his bloody mary alcohol extraction is a slow process left alone the infusion would take several days jeff chose to sous-vide his ingredients so the process only took a couple of hours amazing thank you machine sous vide translates to under vacuum in french it involves vacuum sealing ingredients in a bag and suspending them in a water bath at a constant temperature this is maintained by an apparatus called an immersion circulator it's a delicate way to infuse flavors into the vodka with moderate heat vodka is highly volatile so this method adds flavor without having to cook the vodka cooking could alter the alcohol content as alcohol will evaporate under high temperatures steven used ice from his freezer added his ingredients stirred and was good to go always make sure your ice is fresh as it can pick up flavors from other foods if it gets too old this is called flavor migration and it's not very pleasant in ice julie added all of her ingredients with cubes of ice and gently shook everything in her cocktail shaker the key to stabilizing a bloody mary is to make it cold this slows chemical reactions that deteriorate color or cause syneresis the separation or oozing of some compounds out of solution jeff muddled his cucumber lemon wedges and juice together first by mashing his ingredients against the bottom of the cocktail glass with a press or pestle this damaged the cell walls and released volatile flavor molecules that were then partially recaptured when the infused vodka and ice were poured into his cocktail shaker jeff used ice shards chisels from large clear ice blocks clear ice is completely transparent and means that few gases like oxygen and nitrogen were dissolved in his ice it can also mean that there were fewer minerals like calcium magnesium or impurities like bacteria in the water bloody mary's are a complex concoction but don't let that prevent you from making and enjoying this delicious cocktail however you choose to customize your drink we hope you'll take some of these tips from our three creative chefs

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 398,136

Rating: 4.9023299 out of 5

Keywords: 4 levels, epi 4 levels, bloody mary, bloody mary cocktail, bloody mary recipe, bloody mary drink, best bloody mary, perfect bloody mary, fancy bloody mary, how to make a bloody mary, make a bloody mary, mix bloody mary, brunch bloody mary, bloody mary cocktail recipe, homemade bloody mary, expert bloody mary, spicy bloody mary, italian bloody mary, virgin bloody mary, bloody mary mix, bloody mary ingredients, 4 levels of bloody mary, epicurious

Id: fIguF-8yV58

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020