Bird of Paradise
I love fruity, tropical drinks. Yeah, I know that, technically speaking, alcohol is a depressant. However, the doesn’t mean that your drink has to be depressing. It should help you escape the humdrum, escape the everyday and slip off to somewhere exciting, somewhere exotic. That’s why I love a good Mai Tai, a quality Margarita and now, oh yes, now it’s time for the Bird of Paradise!
Just the name alone helps your mind slip somewhere majestic: Bird of Paradise.
Know what? You can’t have a Bird of Paradise cocktail without paradise — dropping truth bombs over here.
This drink is another in the long line of gin cocktails that I love. I still don’t think that gin gets enough love, so I’m going to keep spreading the word until it’s pervasive. At which point, I’ll celebrate that everyone is enjoying it.
You can think of the Bird of Paradise as a tropical tweak on the Tom Collins. That’s correct, you have a great, easy drinking summer refreshing drink that will instantly transport you to — oh — let’s say Bali.
You take your typical Tom Collins ingredients of gin, lemon juice and simple syrup and add to them grenadine and an egg white. Booyacasha!
Here’s a final tweak and/or word of advice for you: the redder your grenadine is, the more of a color differential you’ll have. On hand we had a très chic froufrou grenadine (all natural and fancy shmancy), which was a little lighter in shading, hence our orange-ish hue. However, were you to attack this with something really red, then you’d get a really red drink with a sexy white top and that’s pretty rad.
Yup, you can even make your own grenadine: take some pomegranate juice, reduce it down with some sugar and you’re set! Then you’re really controlling your own destiny.
Oh, and with all of our cocktails that have egg whites in them, yes it’s safe, so long as you follow safe handling rules. Buy fresh, buy organic, don’t use old eggs, don’t mishandle them and you should be just fine. If you’re really worried, get pasteurized one. If it’s good enough for Louis Pasteur, it’s good enough for you.
Now, let’s get tropical and make a Bird of Paradise!
- 2 oz. gin
- 1 oz. lemon juice
- ½ oz. grenadine
- ½ oz. simple syrup
- Egg white
- Club soda
- Glass type: Collins
- Lemon peel
- Maraschino cherry
- Add your gin, lemon juice, grenadine, simple syrup and egg white to your cocktail shaker with ice.
- Shake.
- I know a lot of people talk about "dry shaking," but it's not for me.
- Hey, if it's your thing, cool, do that.
- Then shake with ice.
- Personally, skip that step, just shake for a while longer, you'll froth the egg white.
- Pour and strain (egg whites you see, you wanna strain anything funky) into your Collins glass.
- While you let it settle, prep your garnish.
- Get as fancy as you'd like.
- We got fancy.
- I was inspired.
- Top with club soda.
- Now that it's settled, garnish.
- Get tropical!