How To Muddle Mint Without All The Proper Cocktail Equipment
The mojito is a refreshing cocktail that's perfect on a hot summer day. Thankfully, it doesn't take much effort to make. All you need is rum, lime, fresh mint, sugar, and club soda, and within just a few minutes, you have a backyard sipper ready to cool you off. You're probably wondering if you need some special cocktail equipment to make the best mojitos or other drinks that require fresh mint because not everyone has a muddler lying around. (Unless you've already built yourself a home bar cart, that is.)
We spoke to Jordan Hughes of High-Proof Preacher, author of the cocktail book "Twist: Your Guide to Creating Inspired Craft Cocktails," who explains that all you need is a bar spoon (a long-handled utensil used to stir drinks) to properly muddle. Bar spoons are designed to reach the bottom of your cocktail glass, giving them the stirring reach for any drinking vessel and the added benefit of doing other useful things — including crushing fresh mint.
The trick is to drag your spoon against the glass
Jordan Hughes explains that you should start by placing the mint leaves at the bottom of an empty glass. Lightly press on them to release their essential oils. Then, he says to "gently drag the mint up the inside of the glass, coating the inside of the glass with the aromatic mint oils."
Once that's completed, simply build the rest of the cocktail out in the glass, and use the same bar spoon to "swizzle" the ingredients right in the serving cup. Swizzling refers to the stirring method you use with your bar spoon to mix your drink. In fact, there's a whole category of drinks named after that motion, called swizzles, based on the unique swizzle stick, which originated from a plant in the Caribbean.
So, there's no need for a muddling tool, nor do you need to aggressively crush the fresh mint to extract its optimal flavor. All you need is a bar spoon and just a little bit of know-how to muddle mint for the perfect mojito. If you're headed to the store to pick up ingredients for one, don't forget that mojitos use white rum – not the aged stuff.