Citrus season is officially here in Texas. I’m currently (happily!) elbow deep in Meyer lemons, grapefruit and tangerines from the Rio Grande Valley.
photo courtesy of TexaSweet
I received a complimentary box of Rio Star grapefruit from TexaSweet and decided to make grapefruit margaritas with these lovely fruits. Since they’re not certified organic and I wasn’t able to ask the farmer directly about their pesticide spraying practices I opted to just use the juice for this recipe below, but check out these ideas for using rind, pith and seeds for folks who do have organic fruit to work with.
Grapefruit Margaritas
yields 4 8-oz glasses
1. Start with 3 large grapefruit, juice them for a yield of ~1 cup juice (I don’t strain mine), pour into a quart-sized mason jar. I recommend using a quart jar as your shaker since this quantity of margarita will overfill your regular sized cocktail shaker. Pour a splash of the juice onto a small saucer if you would like salted rims.
2. Add 2-4 Tbs light agave syrup (depending on your sweetness preference) and 4-6oz of tequila (depending on how strong you’d like them to be) to the jar.
3. If you have bitters on hand, I’d add a few dashes of grapefruit, lemon or chipotle bitters to the mixture now.
4. Prepare your glasses. I’m a salted rims kind of gal. Scatter a few tablespoons of kosher salt onto another saucer. To get the salt to stick, dip your glasses’ rims in the grapefruit juice saucer or slide a wedge of any un-juiced citrus along the rim. Plop rim in salt. Get fancy like I did and dip them in grapefruit zest salt. Fill glasses with ice.
Take a potato peeler and shave off 4 strips of zest (carefully) from the remaining halves left from juicing.
5. Cap the jar with your margarita mixture and shake! For pretty foamy top, toss into the shaker a few ice cubes (or frozen grapefruit juice cubes if you have them) and shake!
Pour mixture into prepared glasses, filling each glass halfway at first and then topping off to make four even glasses. Drop zest pieces onto the top of the foamy beverages and enjoy!