The Underrated Technique For Perfectly-Blended Frozen Cocktails

Nothing gives you those beachy island vibes like a delicious frozen cocktail, even if you're just sitting on your porch or in the garden. This is especially true on a hot summer's day, when that icy liquid feels like it's cooling you down literally from the inside out. Making that yummy cocktail is easy enough, but making it perfectly blended so there are no chunky pieces of ice breaking up the smoothness can be a bit tricky. Not so when you have this underrated but incredibly effective blending technique in your bag of (cocktail) tricks. It's called the dry shaking method — or the dry blending method if you're using a blender instead of a cocktail shaker.

Dry shaking is when you mix the bulk of the ingredients together first — your syrups, alcohol, mixers, herbs and spices — and shake without the ice. Then you add the ice and shake it again, before straining it into your preferred type of cocktail glass. When you do add the ice, it's better to use ice blocks if you're shaking and straining because they don't dilute your cocktail as much as crushed ice would due to their larger surface area, which prevents them from melting too quickly. 

If you're using a blender, dry shake the ingredients first, then pop them into your blender along with your crushed ice and blend to a fine smoothness. You'll pour this directly into your glass; no need for straining because the blending process combines all the ingredients finely. Restaurants will generally do what's called wet shaking — that is, mixing everything, including ice, together and shaking it, then straining (or blending) it, all in one go. Wet and dry shaking are two different ways of mixing up your cocktail ingredients.

But why is dry shaking considered the better way of mixing your frozen cocktails? Because it means mixing them up at room temperature first instead of combining them with ice from the outset. This is desirable, because higher temperatures allow the base ingredients to emulsify better. Not only does this result in a silkier mouthfeel overall, but it creates more foam for the top of your cocktail. The second shake with ice then cools the mixture down before you strain out the ice chunks that haven't broken up in the shaking process, along with bigger pieces of ingredients (mint leaves, for example) leaving you with a thoroughly mixed and perfectly smooth drink. If you want to go extra-fancy, you can also reverse dry shake your cocktail. This is especially effective when you're making creamy cocktails with egg whites. 

Your first shake will include all the ingredients, including the ice, in the cocktail shaker — but not the egg whites. Shake vigorously for about 30 seconds, then strain the mixture to remove the ice and any ingredient bits. We recommend that you use a mesh cocktail strainer, as the fine mesh captures even the smaller ice chunks that can creep into your drink. Then, add your egg whites and show what your muscles are made of as you shake up the mixture a second time. Because your ingredients are already strained and smooth, the egg whites will blend in seamlessly. This allows you to give your cocktails an additional foamy and silky upgrade. Here are just a few cocktails that benefit from the frothy addition of egg whites.