Jellies get your cocktails jammin’
Preserves, jams bring ready-made fruit, sugar to mixed drinks.
How many jars of jam, jelly, preserves and marmalade are taking up space in your refrigerator?
I’ve given up counting the jars in my refrigerator, but I’m good with all of it because each one represents so much more than a way to garnish a piece of toast or drizzle onto yogurt. I love what they add to barbecue sauce, marinades, glazes and cheese platters — some fruit, maybe some heat, certainly some sweet, probably some citrus and definitely a whole lot of flavor in that tablespoon of goodness.
Now I’ve got a whole new way to use my stash — in cocktails.
“Clean Cocktails” by Beth Ritter Nydick and Tara Roscioli (The Countryman Press, $24.95) came out last summer. The authors are all about using fresh fruits, herbs and spices to make cocktails that aren’t loaded with artificial flavors and dyes. Inside their book I found lots of fun cocktails like “We’re Jammin’,” a potent cocktail of gin and vodka with honey syrup and berry preserves, and “The Berry Jamtini.” In each a little bit of fruit preserves went a long way to adding sweetness and flavor.
Looking for further inspiration, I turned to jam makers.
Jennifer Burns of Atlanta-based Emily G’s has a whole armload of cocktail recipes featuring her jams, jellies and marmalades, which are available online.
Over time, she and husband Tom have developed a number of cocktail recipes including the Pear Bellini, Slow Jam Fizz, Southern Old Fashion and Strawberry Pineapple Lemonade recipes found in “Emily G’s Cookbook” (Emily G’s, $12).
“Jams are so versatile and they make really nice artisan cocktails. Basically they take the place of simple syrup, fresh fruit and spices that might make up a cocktail. A recipe that might need seven or eight ingredients can be made much simpler if you use a jam,” Burns said.
Case in point: She and Tom were in their kitchen with a jar of their Peach Marmalade and, “We thought we’d try it in a margarita and it was delicious. The jam provides the fresh fruit flavor and a hint of ginger. We liked it with the combination of three fresh citrus juices – lime, lemon and orange. We first tried it as a frozen margarita and it was OK, but when we added beer along with the tequila, that was the perfect combination.”
A blueberry-lemon riff on a cosmopolitan is Regina Nekola Hild’s contribution to our jellyinspired cocktail repertoire. She created a Blue Farmtini made witha blueberry-lemon artisan fruit spread.
This is Hild’s third year making preserves. She gave up a corporate career to go back to culinary school and connect to her roots growing up on a 200-acre Iowa
farm. “Being a farm-raised chef, we never throw anything away. Several years ago someone gave me 40 pounds of jalapeno peppers and that started me thinking about combining those peppers with fruit. I made Strawberry-Blueberry-Jalapeno fruit spread and the more I played with it, the better it got. I would take it to parties and give it to neighbors, but when someone ordered 40 jars, I knew that was the sign I should build this as a business.”
Now you can purchase her products online. And if you’re ready to branch out from the Blue Farmtini, she recommends her Triple Berry Jam (blueberry, blackberry and raspberry sweetened with local honey) stirred into a cocktail with vodka.