Garnishing
Garnishes are a key part of cocktails and mixed drinks. It's easy to regard the silly lime wedge on the edge of your glass as a mere trifle or decoration. Time to get past your gin and tonic, post-college happy hours where you'd instinctually squeeze that lime wedge into your drink because it wasn't good for anything else. You were wrong then, and you'd be wrong to continue overlooking the goodness a garnish brings to your drink.
Why garnish
Let's start by understanding garnishes. Garnishes are not just for a bonus visual aesthetic. Stick your nose by a lime wedge and what do you smell? Lime! What happens when you put a lime wedge on the edge of a glass and take a sip? You smell lime! With that simple garnish, you are able to add more lime to your drink without making it too tart and disrupting the flavor balance. And according to science, our memories are closely tied to our sense of smell. If I have an amazing drink, I hope I remember it for a long time.
What you’ll need
There are a few tools which can help you build your foundation of garnish technique and style. These are:
Paring knife, for peeling, zesting, slicing, and cutting things into shapes.
Microplane grater, for grating nutmeg, cocoa nibs, cinnamon sticks, citrus, etc.
- Cocktail picks or skewers, for securing the garnish in place or building its height. As mentioned in the cocktail pick article, I prefer
basic stainless steel picks or
bamboo skewers, but this is your own stylistic choice.
How to garnish
Garnishing can take many creative directions, from a basic wedge on up to animal shapes constructed from fruits and leaves. Here, we’ll keep it basic and cover the most frequent garnish techniques from the recipes in Tipply.
Skewering
The most basic of all, where the object is fitted onto the cocktail pick (or similar). Not much to say about this, but there’s a tradition of avoiding skewering two of an item, as opposed to one or three. Supposedly, it is to avoid an association with male genitalia. The adorned skewer can then be placed on the rim of the serving vessel or standing upright within.
Wedge
Usually done with lemons and limes, this is when you cut both ends off the fruit then slice it latitudinally into hemispheres, then into smaller, equally sized wedges. Usually, a lime makes 6 wedges and a lemon makes 8. A slit is then cut in the flesh part of the wedge so that the wedge can hang on the rim of the serving vessel.
Wheel
Done by making latitudinal cuts all the way through the fruit. You can vary the thickness of the slice, from paper thin to ⅛ on an inch. Properly done, a wheel shows the dividing lines between fruit segments radiating outwards like spokes. Wheels can then be floated, slit and placed on a rim, or sunk into the drink.
Coin
Not to be confused with a wheel, a coin is a slice taken off the edge of a fruit, so that one side is covered with peel and the other side is pith with a touch of fruit. Coins are often squeezed, from both sides over the drink, and deposited in the drink.
Twist, Peels, Zests, and Strips
Every cocktail author seems to use their own nomenclature for this, but I prefer to use a more basic and more well understood term: peel. Likely the most common form of garnish, this is a slice of the outer portion of a citrus fruit. Normally, you want to exclude the bitter, white pith, but sometimes it can have a nice effect on a drink. The shape of peels can vary from matchstick thin or nearly 2 inches wide, just as they can be 1 to 3 inches long (or more). Recipes often call for them to be expressed so they cover the rim and drink’s surface with essential oils. Peels can also be flamed, when they are expressed across a match or lighter so that they ignite and caramelize before landing on the surface. After expressing, peels can then be tied into knots, slit and twisted into decorative shapes, placed on the vessel’s rim, or float on the surface. Peels can also be cut into a variety of shapes, from sticks to stars. I’ve also had bartenders rub a peel on the inside of a service vessel (before being filled) and I’ve seen them rub the outside, which gave my hands a pleasing scent.
Ribbons
A long, continuous slice of peel, thick or thin, often coiled inside the service vessel or dropping outwards.
Chunks
Any fruit can be cut into a chunk and placed in or on the mixed drink.
Dusting
A pinch of grated cinnamon, cocoa powder, or similar can be dusted across the surface of a drink.
Grating
Often done with nutmeg, you can grate an item over the drink similar to dusting.
Rimming
Rimming is often done with kosher salt or sugar, but can also contain spices. To rim, first put about ¼ cup of salt or similar into a shallow saucer. Take your service vessel and pass a wedge of citrus (or similarly moist item) around the exterior edge. Next, place the edge of your vessel in the salt and rotate it until all the rim is covered. Then, while holding the vessel upside down, give it a slight tap to knock off any excess before it falls in the interior. This method produces a far superior result without dominating the drink’s flavor profile than if you moisten both sides of the rim and stamp it into the salt.
Sprigs
These are little branches, often of herbs, which can be placed upright within a mixed drink or cocktail, laid across the rim, or if small enough, floated. I recommend slapping the sprig on a cutting board or clapping it in your hand to release some of the fragrance before placing it.
All these methods can be done with the basic tools listed above. I once bought a channel knife and I’ve never used a more frustrating tool which was also impossible to sharpen. Keep the tools simple, and instead focus on coming up with interesting, artful, and whimsical touches you can add to your drink as an extra bit of delight.