Spicy margaritas usually mean muddled jalapeño, which gives you green vegetal heat and not much else. Blue Blaze brings fruit and acid along with the heat, so it does three jobs instead of one.
Half a teaspoon sounds like nothing. It is not nothing. Start there.
What you need
- 2 oz silver tequila
- 1 oz Cointreau
- 1 oz fresh lime juice, squeezed that day
- 0.5 oz simple syrup
- 0.5 tsp Blue Blaze, up to 1 tsp if you want it to bite
- Ice
- Some fresh basil
- Lime wheel and a few blueberries, to garnish
How to make it
- If you are rimming the glass, run a lime wedge around the rim and roll it in kosher salt. A chili-lime salt is better if you have it.
- Combine the tequila, triple sec, lime juice, simple syrup, basil and Blue Blaze in a shaker with ice.
- Shake hard for a full 15 seconds. The sauce needs the agitation to disperse or it sits at the bottom of the glass and ambushes the last sip.
- Strain over fresh ice into a rocks glass. Garnish with a lime wheel and a few blueberries.
Notes
Fresh lime only. Bottled lime juice and a fruit-forward sauce fight each other and the lime loses.
Making a pitcher? Scale everything except the sauce linearly, then start the sauce at half the scaled amount and taste up. Heat compounds in a batch in a way citrus does not.
Same build works with mezcal if you want smoke behind the fruit.