How to Garnish a Drink
Cocktails
should not only taste good, they should be appealing to the eye. As a bartender,
you can allow your creativity and imagination to run free when you get to the
final step of cocktail
making.
Very few drinks do not need garnishing, however, garnishes have
been predetermined by generations of bartenders, such as the
olive in a
Dry Martini,
the cherry in the
Manhattan
and the pearl onions in the
Gibson.
For all exotic and tropical drinks, you can do whatever your
heart desires as far as garnishing is concerned, but you should keep a few rules
in mind.
- Only use
ingredients for
the garnish that are suitable for the drink in terms of taste and color.
- The garnish is supposed to decorate the drink not overload
it.
- If you use fresh fruit, make sure that it is ripe and
blemish free and that you slice it carefully.
When choosing fruit, pieces or slices of apricots, citrus
fruits, figs, kiwi fruit, peaches,
pineapple, and
star fruit, as well as wedges of mandarin and
lime, are very
attractive fruits to add to drinks. Black and green grapes are also very
decorative.
Strawberries and raspberries look great too, if they are drizzled with
lemon juice and
then dipped in sugar;
they look as though they are frosted. Fruit can also be dusted with
confectioners' sugar
for an attractive finish. Slices of
apple and pear,
on the other hand, are not very suitable for garnish because they turn brown
quickly. If you do want to use them, however, drizzle them with
lemon juice to
delay the browning process.
Vegetable garnishes are suitable for savory mixed drinks and
include celery sticks, cucumber peel or slices,
green olives,
pearl onions, and cherry tomatoes. Thin slices of pepperoni also make an
interesting garnish for robustly flavored and spicy drinks.
Fresh herbs also provide variety in or on the
glass. For example,
fresh basil goes very well with mixed drinks including
tomato or
vegetable juice; lemon balm goes well whenever
lemon juice is
used; and mint leaves are "the icing on the cake" for drinks based on peppermint
liqueur or syrup. A touch of green can be added with
pineapple leaves,
which are speared on toothpicks and kabob sticks and fanned out, but, of course,
you can not eat them.
There are various ways to practice the art of garnishing. Make a
single incision in whole fruit or pieces of fruit from the middle to the edge
and perch them on the rim of the
glass. Other pieces of
fruit can then be secured to this with a toothpick. You can put fruit kabobs in
the glass or rest them
across the rim of the glass.
The following are a few suggestions for attractive kabobs.
Pineapple Kabob
Cut a slice of pineapple into 8 pieces and cut out the heart. Spear a few
pineapple leaves on a large skewer. Alternatively, skewer
pineapple pieces,
black grapes, and red
maraschino cherries onto skewer.
Star Fruit-Kiwi Kabob
Spear 1 strawberry
with a stem, 1 slice of peeled kiwi fruit, a slice of star fruit, and a sprig of
lemon balm leaf on a large toothpick or kabob skewer.
Learn more on: how to mix drinks...
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