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COCKTAIL HOUR!

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Hearst Editorial

- What's going on, y'all? It's Justin, and today I'm gonna show you how to make a classic vodka martini, both James Bond style, shaken, and stirred. Martinis are fancy, yet really approachable. Despite the fact that there's no mixers and no juice or anything, it's just booze, surprisingly drinkable. And it is absolutely a standard cocktail that you should have in your repertoire. Now, people take their martinis all different types of ways, wet, dry, through the mud, whatever. Today, we're gonna focus on two variations. We're going to do a stirred martini with a lemon twist and a shaken dirty martini with a nice, beautiful Castelvetrano olive garnish. You've heard that James Bond prefers his martinis, shaken, not stirred. But, the thing is with a gin martini, it actually does matter which one you do, and I'd say, you don't really wanna shake gin martinis. Shaking causes aeration and dilution, which can cause gin to be bruised. That's diluting all the delicious herbaceousness and all the botanicals in the gin. With vodka, doesn't really matter. Vodka's the simpler cousin to gin. There's not as many complex flavors. We're mostly just talking about dilution levels for the only other flavor in the cocktail, which is dry vermouth, a fortified wine, and even then, it's not gonna make a huge difference. At the end of the day, it comes down to style. So we're gonna show you both, and we're gonna show you two different garnishes, two different preparations. Before we make our stirred vodka martini with a lemon twist, I have to show you how to make a lemon twist, and it's a lot simpler than it might seem. Basically, all you gotta do is take a bog-standard lemon, cut it into a thin wheel, then you're gonna cut a little slit into that wheel and cut around the pith. Basically, taking the fruit part of the lemon out, and all you'll be left with is the thin yellow rind. Curl it into like a curly cue shape and then drop in your glass. So, we have our cutie little lemon curly cue twist. Now, we can build our cocktail. For stirring, people have really, really expensive crystal mixing glasses and beautiful long bar spoons, which, if you have that, great, but all we have today is, we have a pint glass and a bit of a longer spoon that you might even see on a sundae. What I will recommend you get and shell out like two, three bucks for, is this. This is a Hawthorne strainer. It is, basically, the most classic type of cocktail strainer. It's very simple. These coils act as the straining mechanism. And they're really awesome, because, in your drink, once you're finished stirring it, you actually just use this little hinge here and push the coils down against the glass to get really great straining. So, that's all the equipment we need, let's get into the cocktail. For both the stirred and the shaken martini, the ratio is gonna be the same. It's gonna be five parts vodka to one part dry vermouth. It's gonna be 2 1/2 ounces, in this case, of vodka to 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth, going into a pint glass, filled with ice. Then we're gonna give it a pretty vigorous stirring, 10 to 15 seconds. You should see some condensation on the glass. We really do want this to be absolutely ice cold, because that is the most important part of drinking a martini. Then we're gonna strain, through a Hawthorne strainer, right into our glass, garnish with our lemon twist, and you're ready to drink. Shaken martinis require some type of cocktail shaker. There are two that you usually find. This, which is called a Cobbler Shaker. It has three parts. The cap, the top that has the strainer in it, and the mixing cup. There's also Boston Strainers, which is usually just a pint glass with just like a tin or steel weighted cup for shaking. Either way, it doesn't really matter a whole deal. Again, comes down to style, and that's mostly what drinking and going out is, is style and preference. So, we have a Cobbler Shaker here, but not a huge difference. Now, we're gonna go to my preferred vodka martini preparation, which is a shaken, dirty martini. I love olives, and as I like 'em, they're basically just alcoholic brine. So, let's do it. It's gonna be the same ratio, 2 1/2 ounces of vodka to 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth. I'm also gonna add in a bar spoon or two of olive juice. That's gonna be the olive brine that comes in the jar. That's optional, I happen to like it, just adds a little bit of that dirty kick. Then, we're gonna get it into our shaker, shake it with a bunch of ice, about 15 seconds. You want the outside of that strainer to be nice and frosty. You should feel the coldness of the drink coming through. Then, we're gonna strain it. I'm gonna strain it twice, just to avoid any little ice particles or little olive bits coming out into the final drink, and then, you can serve with an olive garnish. These are not what people typically use for dirty martinis. People tend to just use your regular pimento filled olives. These are Castelvetranos. They're a little bit pricier. They're a little milder, a little less like salt in your face, but they're buttery, and they're rich, and I think that they pair really well with dry vermouth, especially something like Dolin that we're working with here. The most difficult part about making a martini is drinking it. I'm gonna have to really slowly bring this to my lips, and mm. Oh, I mean, the biggest thing about a martini is, it should be freezing cold, and this is. It's a huge part of it for me, and what's crazy is, that this is an entire glass of alcohol, and it is just so drinkable. It's like you're drinking like, seasoned and herbaceous, interesting air. Like, vermouth is a fortified wine, but it doesn't just taste sweet, it has some like interesting dry fruit notes to it. It's really delicious and adds the perfect amount, and it's complimented, in this case, perfectly by the Castelvetrano olives, with their rich butteriness, but you could also do it with the lemon twist. Get a little bit of acid, get some of those oils in there from the pith of the lemon twist. It's all good. I'm already, I had one sip, and I'm already rarin' to go. I'm gonna finish this and the other one, and I'm gonna see you guys next time. Take it easy. (bright music)

There are countless ways to prepare a vodka martini but in this video we are showing two methods. First we have a stirred martini with a gorgeous lemon twist garnish. Second we have a dirty shaken martini that's spiked with olive juice and finished with gorgeous Castelvetrano olives.

Classic Vodka Martini

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