Frozen margarita recipe for those of you who want one really bad! (also in anticipation of 5 May)

Cafe Society
1

I figure some good frozen margaritas might be nice for some folks right about now, especially since most restaurants and bars are closed.

This recipe is the fruit of Dave Arnold’s “Liquid Intelligence” book about cocktail science and a lot of experimentation on my wife and I’s part. In a nutshell, it balances the alcohol, sugar and a specific amount of added water so that you can freeze it in the freezer, add juice and sugar, and blend for a couple of seconds and have a restaurant quality frozen margarita!
Frozen Margarita (4 servings):

Ingredients:

6 oz tequila (I prefer mid-range blancos like El Jimador, or Olmeca Altos)

4 oz Cointreau (or other 80 proof orange liqueur. If you switch that up, make sure that if the proof differs, that you account for it)

2 oz 2:1 simple syrup (half is added at freezing time, half in the blender)

4 oz fresh lime juice

12.5 oz water (really 12.6 according to the calculations)

A tiny pinch of salt- maybe 1/16 tsp.

Procedure

Measure out the tequila, salt, Cointreau, water and HALF the simple syrup, mix together, and put in a ziploc bag with excess air removed.

Place your bag of liquor, water and sugar syrup in the freezer overnight- the colder the better. Mine’s set at -6F, but it works at about 0F adequately. When it’s done, it should be solid, but not rock-hard like a lump of ice.

When you’re ready to serve, put the contents of the bag into your blender, along with the lime juice and the other half of the simple syrup. Blend for a couple of pulses until smooth. It really doesn’t take much.

The main problems you’ll encounter are mostly around not having a cold enough freezer or getting your measurements off, and the mixture doesn’t freeze correctly.

I’ve created a spreadsheet to scale it up or down- basically the yellow fields are the ones you may want to edit- the number of servings, the alcohol percentages of your spirits/liqueurs (if you use ones that aren’t 80 proof), and what you want the final ABV to be -14% seems to work well for my wife and I, but I realize others may want to switch that up. Be careful that you don’t go too low or too high- it’ll freeze too solid or not at all, because the water addition is calculated based on the proof of the alcoholic ingredients and sugar.

Here’s a link to the spreadsheet:

2

Mmm, I like a good margarita on a hot summer day, frozen or not. Those are pretty much the ingredients I use.

I’ve had good luck just keeping the tequila in the freezer and using ice cubes instead of water when I’m in the mood for a frozen marg-- that way you don’t have to plan ahead to mix and freeze the ingredients. But your method sounds much more foolproof.

3

The ingredients aren’t unique at all- what’s out of the ordinary is that rather than mixing the lime, tequila, triple sec and sugar with ice and then blending the crap out of it, you’re adding water and then freezing it together. You end up with much, much finer ice crystals that way. In essence, it’s what the commercial machines do as well, but they continually agitate the mixture. Here we freeze it about as solid as it’ll get, and then blend it.

4

I get it, it’s all about the texture of the ice crystals. Sounds good. I’ll save this and try it when the temps get up in the 80s-- still a bit chilly here in Michigan for frozen drinks.

5

FOUR servings? Riiiight. Just like Ben & Jerry’s pint?

6

It’s 1.5 oz tequila and 1 oz Cointreau per serving, so yeah. It’s firmly on the strong side, although not dramatically so. FWIW, I started with the rocks margarita recipe and tweaked it from there.

Volume-wise, the recipe makes 28.6 oz of finished margaritas, so a hair over 7 oz per drink, which is a reasonable size.