When people think of cocktails, it’s often the shaker they think of to mix a drink, but many of the most popular cocktails, including the Martini and Manhattan, should actually be stirred using a bar spoon rather than shaken.  The rule of thumb is, if your cocktail contains fresh citrus (and do always us fresh squeezed citrus, never use the dreadful juice you can buy on the shelf), eggs or cream, then you’ll want to shake your cocktail to mix it. If not, then you should be stirring.

Shaking versus stirring

When you shake or stir a cocktail, you are doing a few things at the same time. First, you are mixing your ingredients together. Then, you are chilling the cocktail with ice, and finally, you are adding water to dilute your cocktail. When you shake a cocktail, little pieces of ice sheer off as they collide in the shaker and melt into the drink. This dilution happens much faster and much more forcefully than when you stir. Also, when you shake, you actually aerate the drink, which is essential for cocktails with egg, and it helps enhance the fresh and aromatic elements of citrus.

And the winner is …

For a boozy cocktail like a Martini, the key to the drink is its silky smooth and dense texture. This is completely lost when you shake it. Also, with spirit heavy cocktails, adding too much water too quickly can actually saponify it, giving it an unpleasant soapy quality, often referred to as “bruising” it. While picking up a shaker and shaking it dramatically is fun and spectacular, stirring a drink is much more elegant. It’s one of the reasons why I like to make both kinds of cocktails when I’m entertaining, as the contrast is fantastic.

Mastering the stir

To stir cocktails, you’ll need a specific kind of spoon called a “bar spoon.” Regular table spoons don’t have a long enough handle to get where you need the spoon to be.  Bar spoons are fairly inexpensive (you can get them for under $5 at Amazon). Stirring a cocktail is all about gentle elegance—the goal here is to gradually dilute and mix the drink together, not whip it up.

To stir a drink with a bar spoon, use the glass side of a Boston Shaker. If you don’t have one, you can use a pint glass, a beaker, or even some flower vases will do.  The key here is to use a cylindrical glass.  Add your ingredients, then fill it up with ice.  Put the bar spoon down towards the bottom of the glass, between the ice and the glass, and gently move the spoon around the side of the glass. Generally, you’ll want to do around 30 or so revolutions to stir a drink (the number of times really depends on how fast your ice melts and the drink you are making). It’s important when you stir not to jostle the ice around too much and to keep the spoon on the edge of the ice right along the inside of the glass.

Once the drink is stirred, you’ll want to strain it with a Hawthorne strainer.  Strainers are the topic of the next installment of Basics for the Home Bar.