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Habanero-Infused Vodka
Feb. 27th, 2008 08:07 pmFor Winter Holiday Of Your Choice, I made ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shamiksan and avani habanero-infused vodka. Avani was interested in the recipe, so I figured I'd post it here.
Like most infusions, habanero vodka is really simple. You start with plain vodka. It doesn't have to be very good (and, indeed, very good vodka would be wasted on an infusion like this), but it should have a relatively clean taste -- if it has nasty harsh or acetone-y notes, the final vodka will also taste nastily harsh and acetone-y. I made a 'clean' vodka by buying a big bottle of really cheap vodka and running it through a Brita filter five times. What I wound up with was a very neutral vodka, which was what I wanted.
So: habaneros. I was making four small jars of vodka (I don't know, somewhere between 8 and 12 oz per jar?), and I wanted a good strong infusion, so I picked out twelve medium-to-smallish habaneros to go into it. From those I set aside the four prettiest. The eight less-pretty ones I washed, stemmed, and cut into rings. I put two habaneros worth of rings into each jar, filled the jars up with vodka, lidded them, gave them a shake, and let them infuse for three days, shaking once a day.
Once the initial infusion was done, I strained the habanero parts out and tasted the vodka. (Very carefully, like one drop. I knew it was going to be about nine thousand times too hot for me, but I wanted to make sure it tasted like habanero, not like I'd messed up the infusion....) It tasted like fiery death, which was as it should be. I put one whole habanero (the four pretty ones I'd saved) in each jar and sealed them again, and they were ready to give.
The single whole habanero will continue to steep into the vodka over time, but since it was whole and floated at the top, it will infuse much more slowly than the high-surface-area habanero slices I used for the initial infusion.
I made it potently spicy because of my target audience, but you could make a similar thing quite easily with fewer peppers, or different peppers, or whatever. (Really, you can infuse practically anything into vodka -- I've also made caramel vodka [which is, yes, actually a suspension and not an infusion], and I want to try cinnamon, black pepper, or apple. How long they have to infuse to get a good flavor varies depending on the thing you're infusing, though.)
What to do with habanero vodka, besides shoot it and then hate yourself? It's good in bloody marys, of course, but I also tried a little of it with orange juice for an interestingly spicy screwdriver -- or really, in any fruity drink that you want to make tonsil-searingly badass. (Fruit juice mixed drinks dilute/offset the spice somewhat.) It's also supposed to be good as a meat marinade, though I can't attest to that myself.
(It occurs to me that, should I be in possession of hot pepper vodka ever again, I should try 1 oz of it in 8 oz of mango juice, and if it's any good, I'll call it the Edward Elric: short, golden, and kicks your ass. I'm such a hugetastic dork.)
shamiksan and avani habanero-infused vodka. Avani was interested in the recipe, so I figured I'd post it here.Like most infusions, habanero vodka is really simple. You start with plain vodka. It doesn't have to be very good (and, indeed, very good vodka would be wasted on an infusion like this), but it should have a relatively clean taste -- if it has nasty harsh or acetone-y notes, the final vodka will also taste nastily harsh and acetone-y. I made a 'clean' vodka by buying a big bottle of really cheap vodka and running it through a Brita filter five times. What I wound up with was a very neutral vodka, which was what I wanted.
So: habaneros. I was making four small jars of vodka (I don't know, somewhere between 8 and 12 oz per jar?), and I wanted a good strong infusion, so I picked out twelve medium-to-smallish habaneros to go into it. From those I set aside the four prettiest. The eight less-pretty ones I washed, stemmed, and cut into rings. I put two habaneros worth of rings into each jar, filled the jars up with vodka, lidded them, gave them a shake, and let them infuse for three days, shaking once a day.
Once the initial infusion was done, I strained the habanero parts out and tasted the vodka. (Very carefully, like one drop. I knew it was going to be about nine thousand times too hot for me, but I wanted to make sure it tasted like habanero, not like I'd messed up the infusion....) It tasted like fiery death, which was as it should be. I put one whole habanero (the four pretty ones I'd saved) in each jar and sealed them again, and they were ready to give.
The single whole habanero will continue to steep into the vodka over time, but since it was whole and floated at the top, it will infuse much more slowly than the high-surface-area habanero slices I used for the initial infusion.
I made it potently spicy because of my target audience, but you could make a similar thing quite easily with fewer peppers, or different peppers, or whatever. (Really, you can infuse practically anything into vodka -- I've also made caramel vodka [which is, yes, actually a suspension and not an infusion], and I want to try cinnamon, black pepper, or apple. How long they have to infuse to get a good flavor varies depending on the thing you're infusing, though.)
What to do with habanero vodka, besides shoot it and then hate yourself? It's good in bloody marys, of course, but I also tried a little of it with orange juice for an interestingly spicy screwdriver -- or really, in any fruity drink that you want to make tonsil-searingly badass. (Fruit juice mixed drinks dilute/offset the spice somewhat.) It's also supposed to be good as a meat marinade, though I can't attest to that myself.
(It occurs to me that, should I be in possession of hot pepper vodka ever again, I should try 1 oz of it in 8 oz of mango juice, and if it's any good, I'll call it the Edward Elric: short, golden, and kicks your ass. I'm such a hugetastic dork.)
