Margarita Throwdown

Saturday night plans?  We invited a couple of friends over to try two different margarita recipes and see which one was best. Really, it was an excuse to hang out, maybe play some games, and eat guacamole.  Side benefit: margaritas.  :)  To properly prepare, we went out Friday night for Mexican food at an excellent local restaurant and sampled their margaritas as well.

We pitted the 'leave no stone unturned in creating a recipe' prowess of America's Test Kitchen against the veritable King of Margaritas, Jimmy Buffet. The recipes were pretty different.  ATK uses only really good tequila ('gold') and triple sec, with a lot of fresh lemon and lime juice.  The kicker was that you need to ZEST the lemons and limes and steep the zest in the juice for 24 hours (clearly, this could be a fault if you really have a jonesing for a quick margarita, though we have a way around that that I'll share later).  Jimmy Buffet on the other hand uses 'gold' and 'silver' tequila along with triple sec and orange curacao.  His recipe also relies on a bit of fresh lime juice and Rose's lime juice (slightly sweetened and comes in a bottle). 

After zesting my way through a huge bag of limes and a bag of lemons, I was not looking forward to squeezing them all.  Luckily, a friend introduced me to the greatest invention ever - the handheld lemon (or lime or small orange) juicer in the top picture.  To call it a juicer is a bit of a misnomer.  It's really more of a lemon eviscerator.  When you're done, the fruit is inside-out and all of the yummy juice in the bowl.  It's so easy.

Long story short - the clear, hands down winner was the ATK recipe.  It was smoooooooth.  It had really deep citrus flavor without being too sour, although it definitely wasn't sweet.  The Jimmy Buffet recipe was harsher (because of the silver tequila) and really lacked the depth of citrus flavor that the ATK recipe had.  Obviously that's because there's very little fresh citrus in the Buffet recipe.  Of course, both recipes are light years better than the mix you get in a bottle at the grocery store.

How do you get around the pesky 'marinate juice and zest for 24 hours' when I want a margarita right now?  Easy - make the juice mix in advance, steep, strain, then freeze into ice cubes (or into bigger quantities).  That way you only have to bring out all the zesting and squeezing tools once too.  And trust me, the recipe is worth all the work.  :)  If you want the recipe, let me know!