Mezcal Margaritas with grilled lemons

🌟 Why You'll Love This Recipe

It uses interesting, but accessible, ingredients. Mezcal? Grilled lemon juice? Intrigued yet?
It tastes so good. This margarita, like all good margaritas, is sweet and tart. This one is a little smoky, too.
It's really easy to make. The most involved part is grilling lemon halves to get a little char on them.

💭 What is mezcal?

Mezcal is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from any kind of agave. You're probably familiar with tequila, which is a type of mezcal and can only be made from a single type of agave (Weber blue agave).

In addition to differences in the type(s) of agave that they can be made from, the two spirits taste quite different. Mezcal has a smoky flavor profile because the agave is roasted underground with hot coals after harvesting, allowing it to take on the smoky flavor.

I've seen the following comparison used to help highlight the difference: mezcal is to tequila as scotch it is to whiskey. Does that make sense?

📝 Ingredients

Salt/sugar: This is for rimming your glasses. Use salt and/or sugar, according to your preference. I like salt, my husband likes sugar.

Lemons: You'll grill a couple of lemons and use the juice in the cocktail itself, as well as a couple of wheels for garnish.

Lime juice: Freshly squeezed, please!

Honey syrup: Honey syrup lends sweetness to this margarita. It's so easy to make some at home.

Mezcal: Use your favorite mezcal in this drink. You can also use tequila, if you prefer, but it won't be a mezcal margarita anymore.

👩🏻‍🍳 How to make a Mezcal Margarita with grilled lemons

You'll start out by grilling your lemons. You can do this either on the grates of a grill, or on the stovetop in a skillet. Grill until the lemon halves get some caramelization on the cut surfaces. Let them cool a little bit and then you'll juice them.

After that, all you'll need to do is combine the drink ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake until very cold (about 10 seconds), and strain it into two glasses that have been rimmed with salt or sugar.

From there, just garnish with a couple of wheels of caramelized lemon and a sprig of rosemary!

❓ FAQs