Sometimes I pair food with drinks and sometimes drinks with food. This time I decided to come up with something to have along side my smokey pork tenderloin. What goes better with pork than a juicy and sweet fruit? Enter one of my favorite stone fruits, the peach! Muddled with fresh cilantro and mixed with the mojito classics, I present the peach cilantro mojito!
Now, when you get that itch to go full mad scientist and try a new recipe, you are at the mercy of what you happen to have on hand at that exact moment. The exact moment I thought of doing a mojito I had no mint, the traditional herb muddled with lime, to make a mojito. BUT, I did have cilantro left over from my tenderloin marinade (and the tacos I made earlier in the week). If cilantro, peach, and lime can go together to make salsa, then why not poor some rum over it, add some club soda and ice and crown myself the Cocktail King?!
Here’s how I made the peach cilantro mojito. I started with a slice of peach (peeled) in the bottom of a highball glass, topped with roughly a half of a dozen cilantro leaves (you can add more or less depending on how much of a cilatro-fanatic you are). I squeezed the juice of half of a lime and muddled the three together until the peach was well crushed and incorporated with the cilantro. When it was muddled to my liking I added ice and poured in 1.5 ounces of white rum. I then topped it off with club soda. If you want your cocktail to be Instagram worthy you can get some bamboo cocktail picks and skewer another peach slice and lime for garnish.
A couple tips for you. First, generally speaking, the order in which you add ingredients together for a cocktail don’t matter. When it comes to muddling though it matters a bit more. I add the peach first then add the cilantro. If you do it the other way I find that when you go to muddle you just push the cilantro into the bottom of the glass, instead of infuse the cilantro flavor with the peach flavor. There are a couple other situations where order matters, but I’ll comment on those as the cocktails come.
Second, taste your peach before mixing the cocktail. Normally fruits like peaches will bring a lot of natural sweetness to a drink, but if you happen to find a peach that lacks that expected sweetness you might want to add a teaspoon of sugar.
Ingredients
- 1.5 ounces white rum
- 1 slice peach peeled
- 8-10 cilantro leaves
- juice from 1/2 lime
- club soda
Instructions
- Muddle peach, cilantro leaves, and lime juice in the bottom of a highball glass
- Add desired amount of ice to glass and pour over rum
- Top with club soda until glass is almost filled
- Garnish with another slice of peach and lime wedge if desired