The Cajun Gimlet Is Your Weekend’s Spicy Summer Companion

It’s a simple twist on a classic that will deliver a peppery kick to your senses.

We live in the era of gratuitous spice. Sriracha has more than had its moment (in our beer and otherwise), and has perhaps upped our generation’s tolerance for extra heat. The next logical step is for arguably everyone’s favorite condiment to delve further behind the bar and infiltrate our cocktails.

A classic Gimlet is made of gin and lime juice. That’s it. This lazy man’s cocktail gets a flavorful upgrade in the form of the Cajun Gimlet, which swaps gin for vodka, and adds hot sauce of the drinker’s choosing for the taste-bud burning jolt we’ve come to lust after.

To explain just how simple it is to craft this sucker, we tapped Shane Condino, manager of Tandem Bar in Brooklyn’s Bushwick ‘hood. Condino demonstrates the proper construction of the Cajun, and uses Cholula for a robust, but not sweat-inducing, spice. 

Ingredients:


2 1/4 ounces vodka


3/4 ounces lime juice


2 dashes hot sauce


Combine, and shake over ice

Want more heat? Check out another variation on the Cajun Gimlet, featured on the 2015 Hot List.