One tequila, two tequila...

January 27, 2009 7:46 AM

I'm looking for your favorite tequila cocktails!

I love tequila but I'm pretty sick of margaritas and tequila sunrises. Are there other simple, not so sweet alternatives? Ideally they'd be simple cocktails I can make at home OR order out. I'm thinking the tequila equivalent of a drink like a Seven and Seven would be perfect, but I have yet to come across anything like that.

Thank you Mefi!

posted by rinosaur to food & drink (13 answers total)

A paloma is one of my favorite simple drinks of all time:

Ingredients:
2 oz blanco or reposado tequila
6 oz fresh grapefruit soda
1/2 oz lime juice
salt for rimming (optional)
Preparation:
Rim a collins glass with salt.
Fill the glass with ice and add the tequila and lime juice.
Top it off with grapefruit
posted by *s at 8:13 AM on January 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

You're going to wince at the ingredients, but I swear to you by all that is holy that it's a really good drink.

El Diablo

1/2 lime
1 ounce tequila
1/2 ounce creme de cassis
Ginger ale

Even better if your local watering hole stocks genuine ginger beer rather than the usual treacly US ginger ale. Wiki link includes some not-very-variable variants.
posted by Skot at 8:38 AM on January 27, 2009

La Cucaracha, which sounds gross but is actually delicious, is just:

1 part tequila
1 part Kahlua (or comparable coffee liquer)

served on the rocks.

My restaurant makes a tasty "Margarita Caliente" (though it ought to called "picante") with

1.5 ounces tequila
0.5 ounces Couintreau
a dash of habanero sauce
3-4 ounces Prickly pear puree
a splash of sour mix
posted by solipsophistocracy at 9:00 AM on January 27, 2009

Funny you mention a Seven and Seven because I think Tequila mixed with lime based soda like 7Up or Sprite is quite delicious...just don't waste your crazy top shelf Tequila on it.

Tequila and tonic with a lime can also be nice.
posted by mmascolino at 9:32 AM on January 27, 2009

The Rosebud! It's amazing... if you like rosewater. Simplified a wee bit from this fantastic book.

Rosebud
* Dash of rosewater
* 1 1/2 ounces silver tequila
* 1/2 ounce Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
* Dash of Campari
* 1 piece orange zest, about 1 1/2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide

Rinse a chilled cocktail glass with the dash of rosewater, discarding the excess. Stir the tequila and vermouth with ice and strain into the glass. Add a few drops of Campari to the surface. Serve with orange twist.
posted by amelioration at 9:35 AM on January 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

I know you said you're sick of margaritas, but you also said you were looking for drinks that are easy to make at home, so I will throw my favorite margarita recipe up here, just in case:

Equal parts tequila, fresh squeezed lime juice, and triple sec. Optional salt.

That's it. No mix, no sugar syrup (although that's okay to add, too, if you want), and very little fuss, especially if you have one of these.
posted by jennyb at 9:45 AM on January 27, 2009

@jennyb - I do have one of those and while I'm sick of margaritas, this looks like a fresher, less sugary version that I'm looking forward to trying.

@all - Thanks for the recipes so far, they all look fantastic! Keep them coming.
posted by rinosaur at 9:59 AM on January 27, 2009

I think a really good drink is a greyhound[grapefruit juice and vodka] but with tequila instead of vodka. You really can't get much more simple than that.
posted by vas deference at 10:28 AM on January 27, 2009

Substitute tequila for the vodka in a Bloody Mary and it becomes a Bloody Maria. As some of the other suggestions indicate, you might also just try it with ginger ale (which I prefer to lemon/lime sodas).

Also, you could do worse than look at recipes for gin cocktails and just substitute 'tequila' wherever you see 'gin.' Some suitable candidates:

The Aviation Cocktail, normally 2oz gin and 1/2oz each Maraschino liqueur and lemon juice;
The Chatham Cocktail (substitute ginger liqueur for the Maraschino above);
The Tom Collins (gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, club soda - I won't attempt to specify ratios).

I'd also want to try a Bronx Cocktail with tequila once, but I'm having trouble predicting how tequila and vermouth would play together (tequila, orange, and bitters should all play nice though, so it's worth a shot).

And after lots of experimentation, my general recipe for a Margarita is 1.5oz tequila, 1oz Cointreau, and the juice of one lime (3/4oz to 1oz, depending on the lime). I find the less you do to it the better, and I avoid adding sugar or simple syrup. Fresh lime is a completely different thing than Rose's lime syrup, and if you're used to bar Margaritas made with sour mix this is basically a whole new drink.
posted by fedward at 10:39 AM on January 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

I joined Metafilter so I could tell you this sort-of-margarita recipe.

Squeeze one lime into a shaker, and measure how much lime juice you got. (With the mediocre limes around here, it's usually about half of a tall (double) shot glass, give or take.) Call that amount x. Put the lime juice back into the shaker.

Pour 2x of tequila into the shaker.

Pour a little less than x water into the shaker (yes).

Squeeze a bit of blue agave nectar into the shaker. Shake, and pour into an ice-filled glass.

(This is based on the margaritas made by Julio Bermejo, a tequila guru in SF (and bartender at Tommy's mexican restaurant). I think that at Tommy's they make a syrup that contains agave nectar, water, and simple syrup in solution, and use that in place of triple sec.)

Comments: personally, I think triple sec or Grand Marnier tend to overpower the taste of the tequila -- but they add much-needed sweetness. If you just use lime juice alone (no sweetener of any kind) you get something that most people find too tart. With the agave nectar, you can adjust the sweetness however you like, without an orange flavor masking the tequila. I really do add water as noted above; alternatively, you can shake the hell out of it, but the point is that you want some dilution. You'll want to vary the amount of agave nectar according to the tequila you're using: if it's an anejo, say, you'll probably want very little nectar because those tequilas already tend to have sweet, caramel-like tastes to them; a blanco, on the other hand, calls for more nectar. You can vary the recipe by using a mix of lemon and lime juice instead of straight lime, or even add a splash of OJ or triple sec if you really, really miss that taste.

Enjoy!

Oh, for reference, my favorite margarita tequilas are pretty much all blancos: 7 leguas, el tesoro, Arette, herradura (the 92-proof if you can find it). I also use Arette/7L reposado fairly often.
posted by chalkbored at 10:59 AM on January 27, 2009 [3 favorites]

The Rosita is very nice.

* 1 1/2 oz. silver tequila
* 1/2 oz. Campari
* 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
* 1/2 oz. dry vermouth
* 1 dash Angostura bitters

via The Spirit World.
posted by dfan at 12:06 PM on January 27, 2009

I don't know the exact measurements, but it's my favorite at a nearby restaurant. If you like spicy... habanero tequila, lime, and pomegranate juice. If you don't want to buy the flavored tequila, normal tequila and a touch of habanero sauce would probably work too.
posted by hopeless romantique at 12:52 PM on January 27, 2009

We call this one The Working Gringo:

in a tall tequila shotglass:

1/2 tequila
1/2 Xtabentun (a locally made anise-flavored honey liqueur)

yum!
posted by workinggringa at 8:16 AM on January 28, 2009