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4 Levels of Bloody Mary: Amateur to Food Scientist

We challenged chefs of three different skill levels - amateur Stephen, home cook Julie, and expert bartender Jeff Solomon - to mix us their best Bloody Mary cocktail. Once each level finished and tasted their final product, we asked food scientist Rose to explain their choices from an expert's perspective. Which Bloody Mary are you having with brunch?

Released on 12/14/2020


[lemon juicing] [horseradish grating]

[vodka pouring] [blowtorch hissing]

[upbeat music]

Hi, I'm Steven, and I'm a level one chef.

Hi, I'm Julie, and I'm a level two chef.

I'm Jeff, and I'm the 2020 recipient

of the Nobel Prize in Cocktail Biophysics.

I'm kidding, I'm just a bartender.

[upbeat music]

I've never had a Bloody Mary,

so I'm very excited to try it,

'cause I've only heard mixed reviews,

and I'm makin' a mixed drink.

The last time I had a Bloody Mary?

Hmm, what day is it?

No, actually it was Saturday.

I have them generally on the weekends,

when I'm having a lovely, luxurious brunch.

So, for my Bloody Mary, I'm going Italian.

I'm gonna do a Southern Italian

kind of coastal refreshing version of the drink

using all Italian ingredients.

[air whooshing]

[honing steel chiming]

[drum beating music]

We're gonna start with our tomato base.

And I personally, love V8.

I don't like tomato juice, flat, bland, blah.

I'm liking the simplicity of this drink.

All you have to do is add the tomato juice.

I gotta be honest, that's for amateurs.

Instead of using tomato juice or a Bloody Mary mix,

we're going to use the reserve juices

from a can of Italian San Marzano tomatoes.

I buy the low sodium

because, you know, health.

Eh, about two cups.

I feel like this a lot,

I'ma gonna go with four.

I like to just poke a tiny hole with my thumb

into the tomato so that the entire thing doesn't burst

when I'm squeezing it,

and then pour the remaining juice.

I'm not the biggest fan of tomato juice.

Unless it's like tomato soup, you got tomato soup?

Let's warm this up. [laughs]

So, I'm gonna just stir this

and we'll get that combined with the juices

that just strain through the tomatoes.

So, now, we have the tomato base for the cocktail.

This seems very simple, but remember, this is a base.

This is our jumping off point.

For the alcohol, we're gonna go with some tequila,

that's what makes it the Maria.

The traditional base is vodka,

but you can swap the vodka out for tequila,

and then you have a Bloody Maria.

I like Tito's vodka,

that's smooth, it's nice, it's fun, it's affordable.

I kind of steep my vodka

in a little teeny sliver

of scotch bonnet.

This is super, super spicy,

and I don't want to kill anyone.

And I am simply going to put that one little sliver

in the bottom of my shaker.

So, I'm gonna be using vodka as the alcohol base

in my Bloody Mary, but I'm going to infuse

a couple of Italian flavor components in there.

I'm gonna be adding rosemary,

I'm going to emphasize the rosemary's floral quality

by adding some pink peppercorns.

And really all you need is time now.

To speed up the infusion process,

I'm going to use a sous vide machine

which gets this two-to-five-day process done

in about two and a half to three hours.

I've set the sous vide machine to 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, now, all we have to do is wait.

So, I'm just going to stare at this machine.

You're gonna ask me how much vodka?

A lot.

We're gonna go...

I can't tell the ounce, who am I kidding?

I'm gonna fill it to the top regardless of how big it is.

Just let this sit

and infuse, and impart all that heat, good heat.

All right, it's been three hours,

and this infusion is done.

And the rosemary's given the vodka infusion

a really nice color, just a sign that it worked.

But we should give it a taste and make sure.

And you can just smell the rosemary right off the bat,

which is great.

Amazing, amazing!

What time is it?

Happy hour somewhere.

So, instead of drinking this whole thing straight,

we're going to strain the rosemary and peppercorns

out of the infusion.

And there we have it,

a beautiful rosemary pink peppercorn vodka infusion.

This is looking pretty good,

this is smelling pretty good.

So, next up, flavorings.

The first thing we do is cut a little knob

of this horseradish.

I can't tell you exactly how much I use,

because I like things over the top spicy.

Instead of Worcestershire sauce,

I'm going to be using fresh garlic,

roasted red peppers, and anchovy paste.

So, I'm gonna put all the ingredients

from my pestoshire sauce,

you know, it's like an Italian Worcestershire,

into the blender and blend it up.

So, into the blender with 200 grams of jarred

fire roasted red peppers, and two Calabrian chilies

with a tablespoon of the olive oil that they're packed in.

Just gonna take off the stem first,

one clove of garlic smashed,

about 20 grams of this anchovy paste.

And you really don't taste the fishiness itself,

it's more just the kind of funk

that you get from Worcestershire sauce.

And always try to get

fresh horseradish.

There's so much extra heat

that using fresh horseradish brings out

that you just don't get in the jarred prepared horseradish,

and you want that little bite.

It's really hard to say, fresh horseradish.

Say that five times fast, you're better than me.

Fresh horsch, fresh, fresh horseradish.

Horseradish. Horseradish.

The great part is that if you have this horseradish root

you can trick people into thinking

that it's like fresh Parmesan and put it on their pasta.

[laughs] It's like

when you're at those Italian restaurants

with the Parmesan cheese.

That's what I do because I hate my friends.

Looking for about 20 grams here,

which is a nice, solid handful.

Next, I add my Worcestershire sauce.


[laughs] Wish to share.

I need an adult! Fresh, horsh, horsh, horsh!

All right. So, put the top on and blend well.

We'll start at the low setting, work your way up to high.

[blender rumbling] Great.

And we're looking for a really uniform consistency here.

let's just transferring this

into a smaller vessel for easy measuring.

Next, we're gonna put the juice

of one whole lime. Lime.

And you wanna make sure you didn't drink

any of that tequila beforehand 'cause,

and you would have one hand.

And then, I'm just gonna squeeze it in.

That's why they got me this.

[laughs] squeeze!

First time using this thing too.

Like, I'm from the Caribbean,

we just squeeze things with our hands.

That's how I was taught growing up,

just use that spoon.

No one has really criticized me,

but I know it's not the pro way to do things.

Next, we're gonna go with some celery salt,

and then we're gonna crack

some black pepper to it. Pepper.

And we definitely can use the salt now.

This is pink Himalayan sea salt.

So, we're gonna add five drops of hot sauce.

So, I guess we're doing 15 now.

Somebody count that, write it in the comments.

The lemon and cucumber

are gonna be muddled into the drink,

and this'll be nice, because it will both

get a little bit of lemon, essential oil,

kind of muddled out of the drink into the shaker,

and you get a real fresh lemon hit.

And then you also get the juiciness of the cucumber,

right before you shake that drink.

Next up, ice. If you have great booze,

and great ingredients, and then you just add

kind of smell your refrigerator, freezer ice to your drink,

it just kinda takes away all the great work

that you just did.

I don't know how we became so obsessed with ice.

I'm using water that has been frozen.

Actually, I have my water

that is filtered into my refrigerator from Fiji Island.

This slab of ice was made in a professional facility.

Most major cities have ice companies

that make ice for cocktails.

And they'd be more than happy to supply you

with a slab for your home.

I live in the world, I have an ice maker,

I use the ice that comes out of my ice maker. Hm!

The first thing I'm gonna do

is let the slab temper at room temperature

for about 45 minutes, and then we can cut some ice.

We gotta put about four cubes in there,

and that's gonna be it.

You don't need a lot of ice for a Bloody Mary,

save it for a margarita. I'm margarita girl.

So, this has been sitting out for 45 minutes

and it is wonderfully clear.

Now, we can score the ice without the ice

kind of breaking into unpredictable shapes,

just easier to manage.

And you just need to get down there a little bit

so that the ice has a good fault line.

And then, I'm just going to tap lightly on the knife

up and down the ice until it breaks apart.

From this smaller piece,

you can cut this down to size to use

in all different kinds of drinks.

So, this is about all the ice we're gonna need.

And we're going to hand-crack these little chunks

into a regular shape sizes right before we shake the drink.

So, now, all we have to do, is mix it up.

I just love to make my Bloody Mary mix in this pitcher

because it reminds me of the times that I spent in France,

Cafe de Paris, as you can see.

So, we're gonna start by modeling

our lemon wedges and cucumber slices.

Ounce and half of our San Marzano tomato juice,

just a few really strong presses will do it.

So, we're just gonna add three quarters of an ounce

of our pestoshire sauce, pinch of kosher salt,

and two ounces of our pink peppercorn,

rosemary vodka infusion.

So, now I'm gonna use this contraption,

which could be used to like, hold off those people

that judge you as you drink at 12 o'clock noon,

or to mix up your Bloody Mary.

Always stir it up right before

you put it into your shaker,

pour to the top, shake gently.

You're not dancing,

you're swaying. And now, the ice.

I like these kinds of big shards.

Inevitably, a couple of them

will kinda stick out of the glass,

and it will look like a glacier,

and it'd be all cool and stuff.

This is perfect.

Right up to the top of the shaker,

you know, that you'll have enough ice to fill your glass.

I'm excited,

because just 'cause it's not appealing to the eye,

doesn't mean it's not appealing to the stomach.

That's philosophy.

We're gonna shake this drink on the cracked ice,

just 10 to 12, nice firm shakes.

I think that should be enough,

'cause everything feels nice and chilly.

So, we're starting off with a very chilled glass.

This is again, about making your drink as cold as possible

as long as possible, and pour.

Ice is floating up and all of its little weird pieces,

we're in good shape, now we just have to garnish it.

So, in front of me, you can see my pickled veggie bar.

Don't know where to start.

The first thing I'm going to do,

is rim my glass with salt.

The way I like to do that, it's just rubbed the line

around the lip of the glass, and poo, poo, poo, poo!

Now, we're gonna add two cubes of ice.

This is really where bartenders and chefs

like to get creative.

I've seen people have entire grilled shrimp skewers.

I've seen people skewered, double cheeseburgers

into a giant Bloody Mary and stick them in.

I've had Bloody Marys with umbrellas, and burgers,

and fries, and all kinds of things coming out of them.

I like to keep things simple, just a blowtorch.

I'm going to flame a rosemary sprig,

so the aroma hits you right as you're drinking it,

and it also brings out the rosemary and the vodka.

So, I'm gonna go with the pepper and Jeannie first,

and I'm gonna rip it open to expose some of the juices.

I'm gonna grab the caper berry,

I'm also gonna take up the step.

I wanna put the pickle in, and you wanna dip it in

like your toes at the beach, or just jump in.

A Bloody Mary is not a Bloody Mary,

unless it is ridiculously overstuffed with things.

We're gonna put a stalk of celery.

And then I wanna grab one of the Spanish olives

just a bit.

Wow, that's a little kick!

And I'm gonna finish it with another Spanish olive.

And you should put Julie,

you haven't put the booze in yet?

No, I have not.

I am dressing the set before the actor arrives.

This is a staple in the Jamaican household.

It would be a shame if I didn't have this okra.

And you see, and it worked!

Black pepper right on the ice glacier,

a drizzle of nice aged balsamic vinegar,

and a rosemary sprig.

But first, [blowtorch hissing]

you're not allowed to enjoy yourself

while this is happening at all.

Totally chill, this is an incredible smokey drink.

We've got a fancy schmancy metal straw.

And what I'm gonna do is impale one,

two, three blue cheese stuffed olives

just one more little sway, not shake, and pour.

And this is my Bloody Mary a.k.a my Bloody Maria.

[camera shuttering]

My lunchtime Bloody Mary. [camera shuttering]

And here's my Bloody Mary. [camera shuttering]

[upbeat music]

All right, we're done,

so it's time to taste.

[upbeat music] Hm!

Oh, man!

That, that is terrific,

is what that is. I think we're just

in two different places in our lives.

I don't think we're on the same page spiritually,

but it's not the drink,

it might just be where I am.

So, I'm just gonna need this to exit stage left.

Hm, that's good.

I'm chewing, so that means it's healthy,

and I'm sipping, that means I'm gonna be drunk soon.

What could be so wrong?

I'm kind of proud of myself.

I'll say it, there's this really excellent acidity

and just a little bit of a kind of a savory twain,

and it's from that anchovy.

So, what'd Steven think of the Bloody Mary?

Did he like it?

[laughs] Thumbs down.

A Bloody Mary is a chemically complex drink

that covers a wide range of tastes and flavors.

It can be slightly sweet, salty, sour, and savory.

You can make it exactly as you like it.

Let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs.

[upbeat music]

Steven used classic tomato juice in his Bloody Mary.

Tomato juices a weak particular gel

made up of pulp particles

suspended in a liquid that contains sugar,

salt, and other compounds.

The compounds are prone to separate over time

as the result of gravity acting on weak bonds

between the components.

You don't want your juice to separate in your Bloody Mary.

So, mixing just prior to drinking is key.

I'm not the biggest fan of tomato juice.

Julie used V8 in her Bloody Mary.

V8 is a tomato-based juice with added vegetables

like carrots, celery, beets, and spinach,

and added fruits like blueberries,

mangoes, and strawberries.

V8 can't afford me, so they are not paying me.

V8 is red like classic tomato juice

because of the presence of dominant antioxidant pigments,

lutein and lycopene.

Jeff crushed and strain to San Marzano tomatoes

which are naturally higher in sugar

than other tomato cultivar varieties.

Hand crushing gently releases tomato juices

from the tomato cells

while partially breaking cell walls into pieces.

These become suspended in the tomato juice

and block its flow, which is how the juice becomes viscous.

I'm very used to having a sieve in front of me.

[upbeat music]

Julie added spicy heat from the capsaicinoid

and a thin sliver of a scotch bonnet pepper,

and allyl isothiocyanates in the freshly grated horseradish.

These are two different chemicals

that yield a similar fiery heat

with a big impact at low concentrations.

I'm of Jamaican heritage.

We grew up eating 'em almost like candy.

Freshly grated horseradish is extremely spicy

compared to the prepared horseradish that Steven used.

Prepared horseradish has stabilizers like sodium benzoate,

which is stable at low pH

and extends the horseradish's shelf life

in the presence of vinegar.

It also helped to mute the heat in his Bloody Mary.

Jeff made his own pestoshire sauce

with blended roasted red peppers, Calabrian chili

with oil, garlic, and anchovy paste, and fresh horseradish.

The small amount of oil from the Calabrian chili

needed to be emulsified

in order to prevent the juice from separating.

Thankfully, some of the proteins in the anchovy paste,

have emulsification properties.

They helped keep Jeff's juice stable

while adding a salty briny flavor as well.

There's fish in all Bloody Mary's, deal with it!

Anchovy is an ingredient in Worcestershire sauce,

which is a classic Bloody Mary addition.

By including it, Jeff kept a traditional ingredient

in his recipe but in a non-traditional way.

[upbeat music]

All three of our chefs used clear distilled spirits

to retain the signature red color of their Bloody Marys.

Steven used tequila, which is distilled from agave,

a succulent plant that resembles a cactus.

The plant is rich and fruitchos,

a sweet simple sugar that adds to its characteristic flavor.

May use more tequila.

Julie used vodka which is made from a distilled starch.

Sometimes green, sometimes potatoes, sometimes sugar beets.

The source of the ferment substrate

is not all that important,

since it's distilled and heavily filtered

resulting in a very neutral flavor.

Using a simple vodka is an excellent choice

because it allows the drinks other intense flavors

to take center stage.

I like Tito's because it's organic.

I love the name Tito, and it's vodka.

Jeff infused his vodka with pink peppercorns and rosemary.

Alcohol's an organic solvent

and can extract some flavoring compounds

from the rosemary and pink peppercorns

to add layers of flavor to his Bloody Mary.

Alcohol extraction is a slow process.

Left alone, the infusion would take several days.

Jeff chose to sous vide his ingredients,

so the process only took a couple of hours.

Amazing. Thank you, Machine.

Sous vide translates to under vacuum in French.

It involves vacuum sealing ingredients in a bag

and suspending them in a water bath

at a constant temperature.

This is maintained by an apparatus called

an immersion circulator.

It's a delicate way to infuse flavors into the vodka

with moderate heat.

Vodka is highly volatile,

so this method adds flavor without having to cook the vodka.

Cooking could alter the alcohol content

as alcohol will evaporate under high temperatures.

[upbeat music]

Steven used ice from his freezer,

added his ingredients, stirred and was good to go.

Always make sure your ice is fresh

as it can pick up flavors

from other foods if it gets too old.

This is called flavor migration

and it's not very pleasant in ice.

Julie added all of her ingredients with cubes of ice

and gently shook everything in her cocktail shaker.

The key to stabilizing a Bloody Mary is to make it cold.

This slows chemical reactions that deteriorate color

or cause syneresis, the separation or oozing

of some compounds out of solution.

Jeff muddled, his cucumber, lemon wedges

and juice together first by mashing his ingredients

against the bottom of the cocktail glass

with a press or pestel.

This damaged the cell walls

and released volatile flavor molecules

that were then partially recaptured when the infused vodka

and ice were poured into his cocktail shaker.

Jeff used ice shards, chisels from large clear ice blocks.

Clear ice is completely transparent,

and means that few gases like oxygen and nitrogen

were dissolved in his ice.

It can also mean that there were fewer minerals

like calcium, magnesium, or impurities

like bacteria in the water.

Bloody Marys are a complex concoction,

but don't let that prevent you from making

and enjoying this delicious cocktail.

However you choose to customize your drink,

we hope you'll take some of these tips

from our three creative chefs.

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