How to Cocktail

All the kitchen secrets, tips and techniques, recipes, and inspiration you need to craft transcendent cocktails, from essential, canonical classics to imaginative all-new creations from America's Test Kitchen. Cocktail making is part art and part science--just like cooking. The first-ever cocktail book from America's Test Kitchen brings our objective, kitchen-tested and kitchen-perfected approach to the craft of making cocktails. You always want your cocktail to be something special--whether you're in the mood for a simple Gin and Tonic, a carefully barrel-aged Manhattan, or a big batch of Margaritas with friends. After rigorous recipe testing, we're able to reveal not only the correct ingredient proportions and the best mixing technique for each drink, but also how to make homemade tonic for that G&T, and homemade sweet vermouth and cocktail cherries for that Manhattan. And you can't simply quadruple a Margarita recipe and have it turn out right for your group of guests--to serve a crowd, the proportions must change. You can always elevate that big-batch Margarita, though, with our Smoked Rim Salt or Sriracha Rim Salt. How to Cocktail offers more than 100 recipes that range from classic cocktails to all-new America's Test Kitchen originals. Our two DIY chapters offer streamlined recipes for making superior versions of cocktail cherries, cocktail onions, flavored syrups, rim salts and sugars, bitters, vermouths, liqueurs, and more. And the final chapter includes a dozen of our test cooks' favorite cocktail-hour snacks. All along the way, we solve practical challenges for the home cook, including how to make an array of cocktails without having to buy lots of expensive bottles, how to use a Boston shaker, what kinds of ice are best for what drinks, and much more.