(Actually) Great Batched Margaritas for a Crowd

Okay, welcome back to my kitchen. Now everybody has folks over and wants to make margaritas for them, right? And if you want to make really top-notch margaritas, I like to batch them ahead of time just because it makes life very easy for me. So I'm going to show you how to make an honest to goodness batch of margaritas. This one is going to be bright flavored because I'm using a silver tequila or blanco tequila for that. It's not going to be super smooth like some of the others. I'll tell you a little bit about how to achieve that if that's the flavor that you're going for. Okay, so I've got one bottle. I made this based on one bottle so that it was easy to think about. And I'm going to add a cup of lime juice. This is fresh squeezed lime juice that's going to go in there. Now I'm going to add three quarters of a cup of orange liqueur to that. This is one you may not have seen before. This is Alma Finca and it comes from the Yucatan Peninsula from Oshkosh Cab, which is the citrus capital of that place. And so I'm going to pour that directly in with everything else. Okay, next thing that we're going to put in here is a little bit of this agave syrup. Agave syrup, this is going to be a half a cup. Agave syrup will do two things. It will balance the tanginess of the lime, obviously, but it'll also give you some really nice body to the margarita. So pour that in there. And then I'm going to need to stir all of this together because that agave syrup will just, as you can see, go straight down to the bottom. Now what I just showed you makes a really bright margarita. But if you're looking for something that's way smoother, then I suggest that you replace the clear orange liqueur with something that's brandy-based, something like Grand Marnier. And then replace the Blanco Tequila with a Reposado or an Añejo. Now back to the recipe. Okay, this is the moment that you taste it and figure out if it's where you need it to be. This is sort of my preferred balance. Bright, tangy, enough sweet to balance everything. Not too much of the oranginess from the orange liqueur, but you might want to add a little bit more of the agave syrup or a little bit more of the orange or maybe even a little bit more of the lime. Then I usually put this away, put a cover on it, put it away in the refrigerator until my guests arrive. And then I start making the margaritas. So first thing, I'm going to choose the sort of old-fashioned martini kind of a glass for this. And then I'm going to moisten the rim of it. I usually do that with a half of a lime. And then upend the glass into coarse salt. Salt is really, I have to say, important. If you leave salt out of regular cooking, the flavors are completely out of balance. I say the same thing about tequila drinks, is that they love to have some salt there. Okay, so the next thing that I'm going to do is to pour about four ounces of this mixture into a shaker that I have filled with ice. Put the top on it there, and then I'm going to shake it. And I'm going to shake it for about 15 seconds because this is very, very important to dilute this mixture. Remember, it's very strong here to really make it super cold and also to break up some of the ice so that it looks really refreshing. Okay, so we've gotten that shaken. Now I'm going to strain it. This one's got a built-in strainer here. So I'm going to strain it into this glass and I've got an honest-to-goodness margarita that you can have all batched out before your guests arrive. Shake them when they're ready for them. Salud!