Frozen Margarita
Tequila, orange liqueur and lime blended with ice to a slush, in a salt-rimmed glass.
CC BY 4.0 · Cropped, white-balanced, graded and re-encoded to WebP by eXir.
A frozen margarita with an icy, slushy texture, served in a margarita glass with a green stem and garnished with a lime wedge
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
25 ml fresh lime juice
50 ml blanco tequila
20 ml orange liqueurProprietary
10 ml simple syrup
190 g water
2 g salt
- 25 ml fresh lime juice
- 50 ml blanco tequila
- 20 ml orange liqueurProprietary
- 10 ml simple syrup
- 190 g water
- 2 g salt
Glass
Vessel
295 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 350 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
4 steps · 1m 50sRun a lime wedge around half the rim of a poco grande glass and dip that half in salt.
Squeeze the 25 ml fresh lime juice and strain out the pips and pulp.
Combine the 50 ml blanco tequila, the 20 ml orange liqueur, the 25 ml fresh lime juice and the 10 ml simple syrup in a blender jug, add the 190 g water and blend in short bursts for 30s, until it forms an even slush with no loose chunks left clicking against the blade.
The small syrup line has no place in the shaken Margarita, which balances on the liqueur's own sugar alone. Cold suppresses sweetness sharply enough that the same ratio blended into a slush reads thin without it.
Pour, unstrained, into the rimmed glass and serve with a straw before it starts to separate.
Common pitfallRimming half the glass rather than the whole circumference means every sip can be taken with or without salt, rather than forcing it on a drink that is already balanced.
Keeping and make-ahead
This drink is made to order.
About
Built to solve a bartender's bottleneck rather than a drinker's taste, the frozen Margarita became a machine-made drink in Dallas in 1971.
The shaken Margarita is older and its own origin is disputed elsewhere; the frozen version has a single, well-documented inventor and an exact date. On 11 May 1971, Mariano Martinez served the first batch from a machine at his restaurant, Mariano's Mexican Cuisine, near Southern Methodist University in Dallas 1. His father's own Margarita recipe, carried from a San Antonio speakeasy where he had worked in 1938, was popular enough that a single bartender blending drinks to order could not keep pace with demand 1.
Martinez's fix was mechanical rather than culinary: a secondhand soft-serve ice cream machine, bought and modified over several months to hold a margarita mix at a slush consistency instead of freezing it solid 2. Getting the texture right took adjusting the recipe itself, including added sugar, so that the mixture would set into a uniform slush in the machine rather than separating into ice and liquid 1. The timing mattered as much as the machine: Texas had only legalized selling liquor by the drink in 1970, opening the market a frozen, consistent cocktail could be sold into at volume 2.
The machine spread fast through Dallas and then nationally, carrying the frozen Margarita out of Tex-Mex restaurants and into the wider cocktail repertoire. In 2005, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History acquired Martinez's original machine, judging it significant enough to the country's food and drink history to preserve 1 2.
- 1The Uniquely Texan Origins of the Frozen Margaritasmithsonianmag.com
- 2Margarita machineen.wikipedia.org