How to Make a Ramos Gin Fizz, the Most Labor Intensive Cocktail Around

Today, we're gonna try to make a Ramos Gin Fizz. The Ramos Gin Fizz is special for a lot of reasons. At its core, it's just a Tom Collins. It's just gin, citrus, sweetness to balance the sour, and soda water. This cocktail is unusual, however, in that it uses not just egg whites, but also cream. And what that means in practice is that in order to get the desired effect, you have to shake it for a really, really long time. You have to shake this cocktail for 15 minutes. Some people say 12, some people say nine. Some people go as low as five, but you have to shake it for kind of an obnoxiously long time. What you're trying to do with this drink is you're essentially making a meringue with your arms. You're trying to make it so that the cream and egg white head stands above the rim of the glass. And there's really no other way to do that aside from shaking it forever. It is far and away the most difficult cocktail to make, and there would be very little reason to make it ever if it wasn't so, so, so, so good. So, let's do it. First thing we're gonna do, crack an egg white in the big side of the tin, and we're separating them to make sure that if I get a little bit of shell in here, I can just toss it, and I don't need to also toss the cocktail. Next, we're doing a couple drops of orange flower water. Orange flower water is a hydrosol. It's like non-alcoholic distillation of orange blossoms. You can use rose water if you want to. You can use nothing if you want to. This is just to make it floral and pretty. It really is recommended. You find it at a Middle Eastern specialty store. And then we do a half ounce of fresh lemon juice. This cocktail calls for a split base citrus and a half ounce of lime juice. Now, given the legacy of this cocktail, you might be tempted to think that Ramos was doing this just to be obnoxious, but as it turns out, this was a fairly common kind of epicurean flourish at the time. It is not important that you use both citruses. I like to do it because as long as you're making a Ramos Gin Fizz, you might as well make a Ramos Gin Fizz. Next, to balance the citrus, we're doing one ounce of simple syrup. And please, once again, don't buy simple syrup. Just make simple syrup. Equal parts sugar and water. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Buying simple syrup is like paying someone to come to your house and freeze your ice cubes. And we are going to add cream, but we're gonna do it later because it's pretty important to the process of making the foam do the trick. So, next is the gin. It's not that important what kind of gin you use. All gin's gonna be good here. You could use one of the London Dry greats, Beefeater, Tangeray, Bombay. It's all gonna be good. If I had my pick of any gin in the world, it would be Tangeray 10 because it has the backbone of the London Dry gins, but it also is distilled with fresh limes, grapefruits, and chamomile. And so it gives it kind of a fruit character to it. And that is two ounces of that. And something that I like to do, slightly unusual, is just a tiny pinch of salt. It honestly may be superstition, but I feel like it helps the foam come together. So, technique time. Let me say up front, you don't need to do the special technique with the head that stands above the rim. These flavors alone are worth the price of admission. You could shake this like a normal drink and it would be totally worth your time. I, however, I'm going to show you how to do the technique if you have a mind to. So, first we start with a dry shake, which is to shake without ice. And what we're gonna do is whip the egg whites a little bit, about five or so seconds. Make sure to hold it tight because when you shake without ice, you don't have that vacuum seal thing that the ice does. So, the tins wanna come apart. Once that's good and whipped up, we're going to add some ice and shake for a while. But, you don't wanna add too much ice. One of the things that stands in the way of getting a good head is over dilution. So, I'm literally gonna add three ice cubes to this. And then, hope you didn't work out today. We're gonna shake this for four or five minutes. So, you shake until you can't hear the ice anymore. Now, you add the cream. Fat is one of the things that gets in the way of foam production, so you add the cream after you make it. One ounce of heavy cream or half and half, either way works. It's not the richness of the cream that makes the head stand up, it's the egg. And then, this guy just needs to get shaken to integrate. So, like, five seconds. Great. Now, the fizz part comes from the soda water. So, we add a little soda to the glass, just a touch. And then, pour your cocktail into it, all the way to the top. And now, more waiting. Take this and throw it in a fridge or freezer for about two minutes or so. What that's gonna do is it's gonna help solidify the head, and so it stands up the way you want it when you are ready to serve it. Okay, so, it's been two minutes. Take a straw and poke a tiny little hole in the middle. Oh, it's delicious. All right, now, pour the rest of the cocktail, or if you used all the cocktail, a little bit more soda water. Very slowly, into the hole. And watch it all rise, like so. Garnish with pride, and drink it. It's so good. Usually, gin provides the backbone of a drink, in a Tom Collins say. What's kind of funny about this is that this drink has no backbone. It's like drinking a pillow. Doesn't taste like cream, doesn't taste like gin that much, even. It just tastes like a citrus floral dream.