Bloody Mary Cocktail Is Red, Hot And Spicey
A few years ago, I flew with my wife on vacation to Cyprus. We chose an all-inclusive hotel, to have some rest. It wasn’t one of the best hotels on this beautiful island, but there were still some advantages – such as a large selection of alcoholic beverages, which you could get almost every hour. It’s not that I’m too much of a cocktail expert, but I’m all for trying as many combinations as possible, especially if I’ve already paid for it. Then, my eyes landed on the Bloody Mary cocktail. I immediately started lecturing my wife about the legend of Bloody Mary and the myths about her from horror movies until I almost forgot to read the list of ingredients. The cocktail wasn’t awful, but I wasn’t ready for its flavors. Since then, my face has been sour from that cocktail and red like a tomato, so I had a hard time finishing it. Looking back, it could be that our hotel didn’t serve quality drinks – after all, an all-inclusive hotel – because my next attempt at the cocktail was much better.
When you choose to drink a cocktail, it is recommended that you try to find out as much as possible about its history, components, and ways of understanding. If you are a horror lover, order a cocktail with an exotic name or one that connects to the jargon of horror fans (like a Zombie cocktail, which we wrote about on the website not long ago).
So, what exactly is a Bloody Mary cocktail? How do you make it? And should you be ready for a “horror movie” with every sip?
What Is Bloody Mary Cocktail?
Bloody Mary, as it is recognized by the International Bartenders’ Association (IBA) – an organization responsible, among other things, for setting standards for drinks and cocktails in terms of the method of preparation, design, form of serving, etc. – is defined in a relatively simple way. It’s a cocktail that includes mostly Vodka and tomato juice, which gives it the bright red color associated with it (and the strong taste of tomatoes, but we’ll get to that later).
You can add spices and flavorings to the cocktail, depending on the specific version of the drink or the ingenuity of the talented bartender. You discover several cocktail versions when you get into the thick of it. So what’s in a Bloody Mary cocktail? The list of Bloody Mary Cocktail ingredients includes:
Tabasco
Worcestershire sauce
Soup, fresh or concentrate
Salt
Pepper, primarily black or cayenne
lemon Juice
and more
The drink is usually served in a tall glass, accompanied by ice or a slice of lemon. Of course, you must consider mixing the drink, often done with a stirrer. A typical spike in a Bloody Mary can be (mainly a stalk of celery, but sometimes a stick of carrot and other foods) or plastic.
By the way, many believe using a celery stalk to mix the drink, or as a granish used on Bloody Mary cocktail, started accidentally. The bartender in a Chicago Pub forgot to serve one of the customers a mixing stick, and the client put his hand on the celery stick that was lying nearby.
How Do You Make A Bloody Mary Cocktail?
The good news is that making a Bloody Mary cocktail is simple, at least for the basic versions. There are two main ingredients here, even if the more creative and successful versions will already require some additional components, like the ones we mentioned before. In addition, it is essential to know the unique preparation methods of the drink, for example, how to mix a Bloody Mary cocktail. Mixing it with an air-enhanced shaker at least ten times instead of its “normal” shake can do the job most of the times.
Some Bloody Mary cocktail variations mix it with other drinks, such as the tequila version (“Bloody Maria”) or the gin version (“Red Snapper”). You can even make an alcohol-free version called “Virgin Bloody Mary Cocktail.” And bravo for the creative name, at least if I understood its intention and what precisely the “blood” that appears in its name symbolizes compared to the virgin version.
You can find the drink in various pubs, bars, restaurants, and, of course, all-inclusive hotels. According to tradition, this drink is mainly suitable for drinking in the afternoon and less as part of a night out. People like to drink it on flights, partly because The Bloody Mary cocktail taste is intense. In this way, you can overcome the fact that the air pressure and high humidity levels on the flight damage the taste buds by tens of percent, making strong alcoholic drinks less bland.
Different Bloody Mary Recipes
There are quite a few versions of Bloody Mary cocktails today, so it is challenging to provide an unequivocal recipe for the cocktail or comprehensive instructions on preparing it. The good news is that a simple search, even on Google, can provide you with some additional recipes, basic or complex. Here are some of the best Bloody Mary cocktail recipes we found online:
Classic Bloody Mary Recipe – All Recipes
Spicy Bloody Mary Recipe – Chilli Pepper Madness
Zing Zang Bloody Mary Recipe – considered as “America’s Number One Bloody Mary Mix”
Virgin Bloody Mary Recipe (no alcohol) – Skinny Taste
Another option is to look for videos that can easily show you how to make a Bloody Mary Cocktail. The following video, for example, demonstrates in three and a half minutes the main steps:
Of course, in bartending classes of all kinds, whether face-to-face or online, you will likely learn how to make a glorious Bloody Mary. Several detailed courses contain techniques, tips, and recipes on sites like SkillShare, Udemy, and the European School of Bartenders.
The Health Benefits Of A Bloody Mary Cocktail
Drinking excessive amounts of alcoholic beverages is not recommended for anyone, and Bloody Mary cocktails are no different. The cocktail has a decent amount of Vodka, a drink with relatively high alcohol percentages (ABV usually starts from 40%, but can reach up to 95% in the stronger versions!). However, there is no doubt that Bloody Mary is considered one of the healthiest cocktails out there—as long as you drink it and pay attention to what you put in it, like in any drink.
The main ingredients in the Bloody Mary cocktail, such as tomatoes, pepper, salt, Tabasco sauce, or a stalk of celery for decoration and snacking between sips, are natural and reasonable in terms of health. The meaning is that the cocktail is made mainly of natural ingredients and does not include additives, preservatives, or chemicals. In one serving of a cocktail glass, you will find almost no fat or cholesterol, and the amounts of carbohydrates and sugar are low (what’s more, these ingredients are natural).
On the other hand, the amounts of sodium here are relatively high, which explains, for example, why the drink has a strong and salty taste. Still, you can protect your body from sodium’s harmful effects in a reasonable dose.
The calories in tomato juice are relatively low, for example, compared to various fruit juices, but it is recommended not to drink too much. You can use the cocktail to prevent a hangover after a night of wild drinking for the simple reason that tomato juice—similar to other vegetable juices—returns to the body the salts and fluids that we lose in the process of removing alcohol from the human body.
Tomatoes contain a long list of health benefits, most of which we attribute to lycopene – the pigment in tomatoes responsible for their red color. This natural food coloring is considered a significant oxidation measure and, thus, has some major health advantages according to some studies:
- reduce the chances of cardiovascular diseases
- prevent chronic diseases (with an emphasis on some types of cancer)
- reduce inflammation
- Improve the growth rate of brain cells and also contribute to our youthful look by slowing down the aging process of skin cells
- Provide skin protection from harmful sunlight
- Contribute to bone health
Bloody Mary Cocktail: One Drink, Many Theories
If you’re a horror fan, you may have also come here to understand the “scary” sides of the drink or the origin of its menacing name. The truth is that similar to other types of drinks with unique names, even in the case of the Bloody Mary, we are still determining precisely why the drink is called that or even how it started. The bright red color of the drink, reminiscent of blood, is a significant factor in the chosen name. But one still has to ask who invented the Bloody Mary cocktail and why is it named that way.
According to one of the accepted versions of the Bloody Mary cocktail history, a bartender named George Jessel invented this drink in 1939, and it was mentioned in a gossip column that year. However, a French bartender named Fernand Petiot claimed that all Jessel did was mix vodka and tomato juice, a task that, while unknown at the time, was far from complex. According to Petiot, he created the toppings still associated with the cocktail. According to the legend, the celery stalk associated with it has been added since the 1960s, following a rather unusual request from one of the guests of a hotel in Chicago where the drink was served.
The more interesting issue, at least in the context of horror fans, is the origin of the name. Here again, there is no one theory that everyone agrees on. Some believe the drink was named after the Queen of England, Mary Tudor (Mary I), the daughter of Henry VIII of England. Mary resisted her father’s attempts to convert the English to Protestant Christianity and returned them to Catholic Christianity. The most convenient way for her to do this is by persecuting the opponents.
The Protestants who got caught had two options at best: give up their “new” religion or go to the stake. According to estimates, “Bloody Mary” caused about 300 protestant opponents to be burned at the stake. She pursued those who left England for Protestant countries with spies and agents, and those found “guilty” were punished.
Another inspiration, according to some theories, is the 17th-century Hungarian countess Erzbát Bátóry, nicknamed the “Blood Countess”. Batory, the most famous female murderer in Hungarian-Slovak folklore, was said to hire young maids, torture and murder them. Many believe she would also decapitate them and bathe them in a bath of virgins’ blood, as she felt that such a murder would keep her beautiful and young. The “Bloody Countess” and her accomplices were, according to popular belief, responsible for the murder of hundreds of women (some say even more than 650!), and in the end, they were convicted of “only” 80.
We continue with the following theory, which is that the Bloody Mary cocktail is named after someone named Mary Worth, who is known for killing enslaved people from South America and burning at the stake as part of the witch trials. Others are sure his inspiration is the film actress Mary Pickford (who already had another cocktail named after her at the time), who, thankfully, is not credited with such atrocities.
All these lead us to the legend of the “fictional” Bloody Mary and her appearance in horror films. And that’s precisely the idea of one of our following articles…
