The One Ingredient Your Michelada Is Missing
In its simplest form, a Michelada is a Mexican lager gussied up with hot sauce, lime juice, and salt. They’re refreshing, spicy, salty, easy to make, and about as crowd-pleasing as beer cocktails get.
While Micheladas may have become fairly commonplace in American drinking culture, bars have yet to embrace the drink’s creative garnish potential. At a time when dolling up Martinis with fried chicken skin and putting octopus tentacles in Bloody Marys are both fair game, the Michelada has remained relatively low-key.
But in its home country of Mexico, the Michelada is more of a template than a strict recipe. The garnish potential knows no bounds, much like how we treat the Bloody Mary here in the States. We’re not saying that an octopus tentacle is gonna make or break a Michelada, but stopping at the aforementioned mix of beer, lime, salt, and hot sauce risks missing a trick or two. There are many ways to doll up a Michelada and take it to the next level, whether it’s with shrimp, sesame seeds, Chamoy, or other ingredients.
All things considered, one of the easiest ways to elevate a Michelada is with salted dried apricots, a.k.a. saladitos. Oddly enough, saladitos are actually a Chinese product that made their way to Mexico hundreds of years ago. According to NPR, these delectable snacks are ume plums (which are technically apricots, but that’s another story) that the Chinese brought to Mexico in the 16th century while trading silk and spices for silver. Ever since, saladitos have been a common snack south of the border, often sweetened with sugar and anise or smothered in spices. Chamoy, a family of salty, sweet, red-hued sauces used in Mexican cuisine, is a byproduct of saladitos, made from the leftover brine used for producing the salted, dried fruit.
“I think a lot of times in a Michelada, texture is missing,” Carlos Kennedy-Lopez, lead bartender at NYC’s Lolita, tells VinePair. “Just having chamoy on something does not make it a Michelada.”
Although saladitos are commonly enjoyed as a snack stuffed into an orange or lemon — and thus, rehydrated — those of legal drinking age like to add them to Micheladas as a skewered garnish. Think of it like an olive for a Martini. Its salty-sweet flavor counteracts the spicy, savory profile of a Michelada, completing the package of the refreshing, hot-weather sipper.
“A lot of the candies that you eat in Mexico are salty, tangy, sweet, and spicy all at the same time,” Kennedy-Lopez says. “So it just feels natural to put something like that on a Michelada — something citric and intense on your palate.”
When adding a saladito to a Michelada, every flavor profile is accounted for. Even though beer cocktails get a bad rap, there’s no reason that such drinks don’t deserve the same attention to garnishes as a drink as iconic as the almighty Martini. And just like with a Martini or Bloody Mary, the drinker can choose how they want to enjoy the garnish as they wish.
“I usually just eat them, but I think that saladitos are like a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ situation,” Kennedy-Lopez says. “It’s sort of like when you’re having a Martini. Do you let your olives sit there or do you put them in the drink? Or if you’re having a Gibson, do you drop the onion in and save it for the end, or do you go for it?”
At the end of the day, the Michelada is a very personal drink. There’s no right or wrong way to garnish one, but adding a saladito, a chamoy rim, a salt rim, or a shrimp cocktail can make it pop.
“I think the saddest part that I see sometimes is when people don’t drink or consume the chamoy or the salt that’s on the rim when they’re having a Michelada,” Kennedy-Lopez says. “Get your tongue in there and get your mouth on the glass. The more textures that are there and the more fun you can have with it, the better. It’s all part of the drink.”
*Image retrieved from mizina via stock.adobe.com
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