How to Cocktail: Recipes and Techniques for Building the Best Drinks

by America's Test Kitchen (Editor)

Overview

All the kitchen secrets, techniques, recipes, and inspiration you need to craft transcendent cocktails, from essential, canonical classics to imaginative all-new creations from America's Test Kitchen.

Cocktail making is part art and part science—just like cooking. The first-ever cocktail book from America's Test Kitchen brings our objective, kitchen-tested and -perfected approach to the craft of making cocktails. You always want your cocktail to be something special—whether you're in the mood for a simple Negroni, a properly muddled Caipirinha, or a big batch of Margaritas or Bloody Marys with friends. After rigorous recipe testing, we're able to reveal not only the ideal ingredient proportions and best mixing technique for each drink, but also how to make homemade tonic for your Gin and Tonic, and homemade sweet vermouth and cocktail cherries for your Manhattan. And you can't simply quadruple any Margarita recipe and have it turn out right for your group of guests—to serve a crowd, the proportions must change. You can always elevate that big-batch Margarita, though, with our Citrus Rim Salt or Sriracha Rim Salt. How to Cocktail offers 150 recipes that range from classic cocktails to new America's Test Kitchen originals. Our two DIY chapters offer streamlined recipes for making superior versions of cocktail cherries, cocktail onions, flavored syrups, rim salts and sugars, bitters, vermouths, liqueurs, and more. And the final chapter includes a dozen of our test cooks' favorite cocktail-hour snacks. All along the way, we solve practical challenges for the home cook, including how to make an array of cocktails without having to buy lots of expensive bottles, how to use a Boston shaker, what kinds of ice are best and how to make them, and much more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945256943
Publisher:	America's Test Kitchen
Publication date:	10/08/2019
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	63,774
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

America’s Test Kitchen is well-known for its top-rated television shows with more than 4 million weekly public television viewers, bestselling cookbooks, magazines, websites, and cooking school. The highly reputable and recognizable brands of America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated, and Cook’s Country are the work of over 60 passionate chefs based in Boston, Massachusetts, who put ingredients, cookware, equipment, and recipes through objective, rigorous testing to identify the very best. Discover, learn, and expand your cooking repertoire with Julia Collin Davison, Bridget Lancaster, Jack Bishop, Dan Souza, Lisa McManus, Tucker Shaw, Bryan Roof, and our fabulous team of test cooks!

The first ever Cocktail book from America's Test Kitchen brings our objective, kitchen-tested and perfected approach to the cocktail arena from a home cook's perspective.

Editorial Reviews

08/19/2019

With their trial-and-error approach for perfection, the America’s Test Kitchen cooks step away from the stove for this, their first cocktail manual. The book includes a broad spectrum of precise classic and updated recipes: Irish coffee is sampled at a variety of java to whiskey proportions and with three different types of sugar before landing on a four-to-one ratio sweetened with basic simple syrup; a more radical caffeinated concoction, turning up in a chapter of shaken beverages, is an espresso martini that substitutes rum and Bénédictine for the traditional vodka. Equally daring, among the stirred offerings is the new-fashioned gin and tonic, which employs a tonic syrup rather than the effervescent version to create a still and stiff quaff made for a rocks glass. For fans of vegetables, there’s a celery gimlet as well as the Alcachofa, which blends tequila with the artichoke-based liqueur Cynar. Party hosts will welcome the chapter of “big batch” recipes while teetotalers will appreciate the numerous nonalcoholic offerings including the Sicilian sojourn, made with tarragon and blood orange juice. The concluding chapters offer a vast assortment of homemade syrups, bitters, rim salts and sugars, liqueurs, and vermouths. Foolproof and high-proof, this thoroughly researched and easy to follow volume will steady the hand of any home mixologist. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Foolproof and high proof, this thoroughly researched and easy to follow volume will steady the hand of any home mixologist." —Publisher's Weekly

"Fledgling bartenders should run, not walk, to borrow the first cocktail-focused guide from America’s Test Kitchen (ATK). Without a doubt, it’s one of the most comprehensive introductions to a centuries-old art and science, beginning with nearly 10 critical principles of cocktailing, such as using higher-quality ingredients and always measuring (never just eyeballing it)." —Booklist

"As their name suggests, the folks at America’s Test Kitchen are sticklers about testing recipes, and their first-ever cocktail book takes the same rigorous approach. Organized by method of mixing, How to Cocktail not only offers up a slew of classic recipes and a handful of originals, but also explains how to properly use bar tools, breaks down the most common base spirits and mixers, and provides instructions for DIY syrups and infusions. It’s a perfect beginner’s guide for the cocktail-curious." —Imbibe

"The team at America's Test Kitchen has finally brought their thoughtful, stright-forward, obsessively-tested sensibility to the world of tipples with this instructive cocktail tome. Not only does it cover all of the basic cocktail techniques and gear you'll need to perfect both classic and experimental cocktails from the book, it's also packed with recipes for syrups, liqueurs, garnishes, and tons of handy tips and tricks to take your home cocktail game up a notch." —MSN

"America’s Test Kitchen has finally come out with an encouraging bar manual that’s as trustworthy as its cookbooks. Packed with straightforward, unromantic, no-nonsense information, this technique-driven tome offers perfect clarity for the home bartender." —Chicago Tribune

"A thorough and helpful introduction to cocktail making from the perspective of the home cook." —Library Journal

"How to Cocktail is a road map for the curious.." —Wall Street Journal

“How to Cocktail” (America’s Test Kitchen, 262 pages, $24.99) is written by the earnest experimenters at America’s Test Kitchen, which has produced dozens of cookbooks written in the no-nonsense approach of a high-school chemistry lab manual. “We start the process of testing a recipe with a complete lack of preconceptions,” they write by way of introduction, “which means that we accept no claim, no technique, and no recipe at face value.” —Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher