Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Rosemary's Vodka

This vodka infusion is the first of our experiments to have its own soundtrack. Any time the Mad Scienticians make anything that involves rosemary, we get automatically earwormed. I get the song "Evil" by Interpol stuck in my head, whereas Wayland usually gets Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair."

We began thinking about a rosemary-infused vodka after using our garlic and jalapeño vodkae to cook a beef roast. We marinaded the roast overnight in the two vodkae, then combined the leftover marinade with other ingredients to pan-cook the roast. (We used a variation of this recipe, substituting the vodka for the wine.) Needless to say, the roast tasted delicious. We considered what other vodka infusions would work well as a marinade, and naturally, rosemary (one of our most commonly used seasonings) was the first we thought of.

Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a cooking blog! I'm sure we'll come up with a drink to use this in, too (other than the obvious choice, yet another bloody mary variation). But there's more to alcohol than beverages, and as scienticians, we want to put our experiments to every possible test.

We began this infusion by acquiring some fresh rosemary. We found a package of three sticks, each thickly covered in the narrow leaves. We used only one of these sticks.



I washed the rosemary and stripped the leaves off of the stick.



Once all of the leaves were removed, I discarded the stick itself and poured in the vodka.



We doubt if this will take more than three days; perhaps four at the outside. We made the mistake of infusing our spearmint vodka for five days, and I find it unbearably strong. To prevent this, we intent to take a small sample of the rosemary vodka after two days, and then daily until it is done. At that point, we'll post the results.

3 comments:

Nicole said...

I bet the rosemary vodka would make an excellent martini - especially if mixed with some Bombay Sapphire.

N.

Anonymous said...

i have had strawberry/rosemary infused vodka with a splash of cran and lime juice....magnificent!

John S. said...

I am preparing to create a Rosemary Vodka (as it's in season) and am excited about creating a cocktail for the restaurant I work at. I did a Basil Vodka a few years ago that was insanely delicious, but after three days, the taste of the basil was so strong and bitter that it was almost undrinkable. I agree that after day two one must test the spirit every 6 hours to insure quality drink! Cheers! Love the website guys!