One of the first bottles I ever bought when I started Simple Cocktails was amaretto, an almond liqueur. I made a few drinks with it, then it collected dust in the back of my liquor cabinet for months. When the bottle ran out, I never thought of it again.
Recently, I was trying to figure out a good cocktail for dessert time, and Lisa (my wife and podcast co-host) recommended Amaretto Sours, a drink I haven’t made in at least 3 years. I grabbed some amaretto, some lemons, and the Amaretto Sours were the hit of the party! I’ve since almost finished the bottle making them for Lisa and others at the home bar. Here’s the recipe:
Amaretto Sour
- fill an old fashioned glass with ice and set a cherry on top, then set that glass aside
- in a shaker, add:
- 2 oz amaretto
- 1 oz lemon juice
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 egg white
- dry shake the mixture (don’t add ice) vigorously
- add ice and shake again to cool
- strain into the old fashioned glass that you’re prepped
A quick note about egg whites. There is a tiny risk of salmonella from raw eggs (about 1 in 20,000 may have it), but alcohol kills germs, right? Plus I’ve had several of these in the last few weeks and have yet to contract salmonella. Adding some nice fresh, local eggs will add a richness to cocktails that’s pretty amazing, and it’s getting popular again to add them to Sours.
We make an Amaretto Sour on the Simple Cocktails podcast, too. Listen here.
After doing a ton of research around how to get pasteurized eggs (1 in 20k still seems high to me for how bad salmonella is), I came across a company that sells totally pure egg whites that have been pasteurized after being separated from the yolk but left completely unchanged other than that, so no terrible additives or preservatives. It comes in a half gallon little tub with a nifty little hand pump and the while thing goes in the fridge and lasts easily a few months.
After using them in a handful of different sours at home, I can’t tell the difference between them and regular whole eggs, but I get the added benefit of not having to throw away yolks and I can even use the whites for cooking.
Now… sour everything!
That sounds amazing Damien! What’s the product called? I gotta look it up.
Yeah I’ve heard people use powdered eggs and all sorts of grody sounding muck, sounds like you’re on to something here.
Doh, yeah I guess that would have been helpful as well!
Completely agree with you on the powdered eggs thing. I never even tried those because it just seems like I’d be adding sand to my cocktails and I’m not terribly keen on that idea. Plus, I generally just prefer fresh and non processed ingredients wherever possible.
The company is called https://www.eggwhitesint.com/. They’re geared towards heavy protein intake for working out but totally work for this purpose as well as far as I can tell.
Definitely check them out.