Infusing a cocktail with smoky flavor usually involves a pricey specialty tool, such as a smoking gun.
Entertaining
Infuse Your Cocktails with Easy Smoked Ice
No fancy equipment needed.
By Published Dec. 21, 2022.
The gun burns wood chips, captures the smoke, and blows it into a box or cloche in which resides a cocktail. As the flavor particles in the smoke condense on the drink, they impart their smoky essence.
But there’s a far easier—and cheaper—way to get the same effect: Make liquid smoke ice cubes.
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What Is Liquid Smoke?
A popular ingredient in barbecue sauces, liquid smoke is made by burning wood chips and condensing the hot smoke to form a liquid.
Bottles of the liquid can be stored in the pantry for over a year, so it’s a great ingredient to keep on hand.
How to Make Liquid Smoke Ice Cubes
To add liquid smoke to cocktails, we mixed ¼ teaspoon of liquid smoke per 1 cup of water and froze the water in ice cube trays.
We then tested using a 1¾-inch-wide smoked ice cube in various cocktails (3 regular 1¼-inch-wide cubes would work as well). We tested the cubes in both rocks and shaken-and-strained drinks.
We found that a rocks drink’s flavor evolved as the smoke-flavored ice slowly melted. In shaken drinks, a 30-second shake infuses a sufficient amount of smoke into the drink.
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The Best Cocktails for Liquid Smoke Ice Cubes
Generally speaking, we found the smoke best suited to whiskey-based cocktails (it felt out of place with clear spirits like gin and vodka).
We recommend trying a Boulevardier (bourbon, Campari, sweet vermouth) over a smoked ice cube, or shaking up a Paper Airplane (bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, lemon juice) with a few of the flavored cubes.
