[Double] Spicy Pickle Martini
Filthy enough that you should feel compelled to pray about it.
The ingredients:
3 ounces vodka
2 ounces spicy pickle brine
1 ounce dry vermouth
sliced pickle, for garnish
The recipe:
Mix ingredients in shaker with large ice cube. Shake for no more than 30 seconds. Strain and garnish with pickle slices.
The story:
The story behind this is both fancy and tacky, which is a balance I aspire to strike in all parts of my life. The fancy part is that up until recently, I hated martinis. Didn’t think they were for me. I think the botanical of gin, mixed with olive is… questionable! That said, I’ve come to realize that a martini is a science, kind of like baking. In college, you can throw coke and whiskey in a red solo cup and go on your way, and a variation of that may even work as an adult (though, I would urge you to… not). But a martini? A martini is specific and measured. It should be cold as can be, and the measurements should be to the drop.
I fell in love with martinis while interviewing Paul Fieg at Bemelmans on the Upper East Side. Paul is a big martini fan and says that vodka martinis are imposters (sorry, Paul). On that day, I allowed him to order for me, which is how I ended up developing an appreciation for a gin martini with a twist. Since then, I’ve been playing with recipes—feeling like I was getting closer and closer with a love of a dirty martini. Then I realized… why would I not level this up and amp up the “dirty” part?
That’s where I call on some East Tennessee bad habits. I’ve shown a love of pickles before on here, but spicy pickles are the real highlight. And while this recipe has some higher-end spicy pickles from Grillo’s (a god-tier pickle, if I say so myself), I was raised on Van Holten’s Spicy Pickles (the working man’s pickle), which features a dancing pickle lady on the front of the bag that the individual pickle is encased in. I used to pick one up from the gas station after school, devour the pickle, then split the brine with my mom.
So, much like a lot of these recipes, I feel like the Double Spicy Pickle Martini is a bit of a marriage between my life now and a piece of my life growing up. It packs a punch and softens the blow of drinking a full-on martini. It has all of the strength and twice the bite, and yet, it’s somehow less lethal than the alcohol-forward martini. Whip this bad boy up this spring and think of our dancing queen