This week we're having fun with smoke in our kitchens with guests, Brandon Miller and Meredith McNamara, two of the co-founders of Spirits with Smoke. They share their passion for elevating cocktails and mocktails using smoking techniques and give us some fun ideas for smoking snacks as well.
Spirits with Smoke is a Calgary company offering smoking boards and saucers, cocktail kits, bitters, barware, garnishes and syrups on their website www.spiritswithsmoke.com. You might also spot them at a local market across Canada. They ship outside Canada as well, so be sure to check out the website. These are quality products, thoughtfully created, and curated, to help home bartenders like us add a little something extra to our cocktails. And it's really fun! It makes a great gift too!
We took Meredith and Brandon's suggestions for cocktails and gave them a try at home - a classic lime margarita and a negroni. For the margarita, we smoked the simple syrup and the salt to rim the glass. It added a subtle smoky aroma and flavour to a delicious classic drink. And that salt was our favourite! We'll be putting smoked salt on absolutely everything. For the negroni, we mixed the drink before smoking it. This is a spirit-forward drink and we found you really can add too much smoke. But playing with that ratio is the fun part! These are both great ways to get into smoking cocktails with drinks guaranteed to impress all your friends.
We also smoked a few snacks to enjoy with our drinks. With the margarita, we made a simple fresh salsa and added smoke to it. And with the negroni, we made a Chex Party Mix and smoked that too. Both are amazing - be sure to listen to the second half of the episode when we talk about our experience with the smoking saucer and all of these recipes. Next we plan to smoke the mini cheese balls Erin made for our recent party episode. What will you smoke first?
Check out all the links mentioned in this episode below. And please go support our friends at Spirits with Smoke. You'll be so glad you did.
Episode Links
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~ Spirits with Smoke Website
~ Spirits with Smoke Instagram
~ Drink Masters on Netflix
~ Interview with Natalie from Drink Masters
~ Token Bitters Edmonton
~ Black Cloud Bitters Calgary
~ Margarita Recipe
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Three Kitchens Podcast - a home cooking show
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