Well Pickle Me Pink!

Minnesota Pickle Martini

I decided that I needed to write a post about the (dirty) pickletini, a (vodka) martini that uses a pickle spear and pickle juice in place of olives and olive juice. Now I can already see you haters out there scrunching your nose at this, but honestly, if you like dirty martinis you will love this salty goodness. And trust me that the pickle doesn’t have to look like doo-doo in a martini glass, like the above pic.

More after the jump…

Of course, when I Googled ‘pickletini’ to see who else had tried out this concoction, I stumbled upon the M.A. Gedney Company’s pickle recipe book called Picklicious that you can download for free!!

Okay, I admit that I might be too excited about this, but c’mon, this is pretty cool. Not only can you download the whole book, you can look at recipes by pickle potency and type of meal. Let’s take an example. Choose ‘medium’ and ‘just the juice’ and you get recipes for a Bloody Mark and Dill Sandwich Butter. Yum!

According to Gedney, here’s what a pickletini entails (this is much more involved than just replacing olives/olive juice with pickles/pickle juice):

· 1 bottle (.750L) premium vodka (all natural potato vodkas like Wyborowa work best)
· 1/2 cup GEDNEY Dill Pickle juice (strained juice from hot dills, or spicy spears work best)
· 1/2 cup dry vermouth
· 2 lemons
· 2 fresh hot red chile peppers, split
· 8 whole star anise ‘buds’
· 1/4 cup juniper

Directions
Zest lemons and place zest and split chiles in the bottom of a sterilized 1 liter glass mason jar with a hinged lid. Reserve the rest of the lemons for another use. Fill with the vermouth, pickle juice, juniper berries and star anise buds. Place in freezer for 1 week and then serve in chilled martini glasses. Garnish with baby dill pickles.

Sounds spicy and exotic!!

Picklicious includes recipes for appetizers, soups, salads, and more. I’ll report back to ES with any must eats and with my verdict on the Gedney pickletini.

Photo: edkohler

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12 comments

  • Coonass cook July 16, 2008  

    cleaver and crazy that nobody thought of this before.

  • Britannia July 16, 2008  

    This looks great, I’ve always avoided the dirty martini as I’m not a huge fan of the olive thing, I’ll be trying this one, not sure if I can wait a week though.

  • JoeHoya July 16, 2008  

    There used to be a restaurant very near the White House called Maxim’s – I don’t remember if it was Russian or Ukrainian, but either way they were justifiably famous for their numerous infused vodkas and vodka-based cocktails.

    One of their more adventurous infusions was flavored with fresh ground horseradish and garnished with a cornichon pickle instead of olives. I loved it, but it wasn’t for the faint of heart.

    To quote Ralph Wiggum: “It tastes like burning…”

  • Edouble July 16, 2008  

    Ooh, that sounds really good. I love horseradish, too! We’ll have to see if that place is still in business.

  • JoeHoya July 16, 2008  

    It’s not – been closed for at least a year now. The phone is disconnected, too.

    Strangely enough, though, there’s a club promotions site that is advertising a New Year’s Eve party that is scheduled to take place there on 12/31/08.

    If you like horseradish and other spicy/hot infusions, you may want to check out Poste in Penn Quarter. They’ve got some great infused vodkas including one or two with some real heat to them.

  • gansie July 16, 2008  

    and i bet this would be good with a black pepper infused vodka

  • So Good July 17, 2008  

    Um. I’m totally down. I love pickles and dirty martinis.

  • Mdlt'la July 17, 2008  

    vodka martinis are not supposed to contain shoe polish (I mean vermouth). this from a friend who exclusively drinks dirty vodka martinis. She is very upset whenever they arrive with vermouth in them because she said vodka is a stand alone alcohol in the martini making process (unlike gin).

  • Edouble July 17, 2008  

    Hmmm…that’s weird. I think I’ve always had them with vermouth, and if you google them, every recipe out there says to add vermouth. Is this friend of yours a verifiable expert?

  • the interwebs July 18, 2008  

    The Pickletini was apparently invented by Tennessean dam workers. They wanted a way to stay cool and intoxicated while at the same time repel mosquitoes. True story.

  • Mdlt'la July 21, 2008  

    do pickles repel mosquitoes?

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