Happy Cinco de Mayo! Today is a great excuse to eat plenty of Mexican food. Do you love Mexican food? If so you're right there with Michelle Obama, who said yesterday that it is her "favorite food in the whole wide world."
And if you want a refreshing drink to wash down all that spicy Mexican food, try a michelada. Have you ever had one?
A michelada is a beer cocktail with hot sauce, lime, and salt — a beer margarita, if you will. Without the liquor, so this is the perfect midweek drink. This particular michelada has fresh mango, too, which makes it doubly sweet and delicious.
What's your favorite way to make a michelada?
Mango Michelada
1 drink
1/2 cup mango, peeled, pitted and pureed*
2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
1 (12-ounce) chilled Mexican beer
1 lime
Coarse salt
Fresh mango for garnish
Hot sauce (optional)
Combine mango puree, lime juice and beer. Rub a lime wedge around the rim of a tall glass and then press the rim into coarse salt, coating the rim. Fill glass 2/3 full with ice and then add mango mixture. Add in a few drops of hot sauce if desired.
*1 mango yields approximately 1/2 cup mango puree
Related: Summer Cocktail Recipe: Michelada
(Image: National Mango Board)
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Though this is a nice recipe, I suggest you at least try a traditial michelada as well, Lime, chile powder in a glass with beer. very good.
Forgive me if I'm off here, but I thought a traditional Michelada consisted of beer, lime, and Worcestershire sauce, served over ice. The addition of hot sauce, I believe, makes the recipe more akin to a Michelada Cubana, although I guess any combination of beer, ice, and whatever, is technically a "mi chela helada"...so drink up!
I put down a few Micheladas in MX recently. Nothing better.
I made some last weekend. I made a batch of the ingredients and put it in a squirt bottle so that whenever I want to make more I can squirt the base into the glass without having to pull out all the different bottles.
-valentina, worcestershire, fresh lime juice, soy/maggi, and a secret ingredient which is some kind of hot-tart and sweet chile sauce from the MX market, the name of which escapes me. Chile "Tajin" to rim the glass.
These are great with darker beer. I like mine pretty straight--just beer, lots of lime juice, and a salty rim.
Ooh, very interesting. Micheladas I've had were more like Bloody Marys, pretty tomatoey along with the hot sauce. I think I'd like the mango version more. Especially since I do like green mango-chili gelato and dried mangoes with chili on 'em. Hot and sweet and tart, mmm.
When in mexico (playa del carmen) a couple of years ago - the Michelada did not come with hot sauce - though i'm certain it would be great that was as well... and i totally agree, darker beers are the way to go. Negra Modelo, Bohemia, or Leon (don't get that one here) are excellent for this...
sheesh, is it 5pm yet?
I consider myself to be a bit of a michelada expert and can tell you that recipes vary quite a bit by region. Some include hot sauce, others use clamato instead of tomato juice, some use no tomato juice, only lime... on and on. In all of their incarnations, they are some of the greatest cocktails ever to be invented. Yumm... Too bad I have to go to an all-staff meeting instead of cocktail hour...
all the hot sauce we saw in the yucatan was habanero based - that might be a little much in my beer, but i would give something like that a try...
any thoughts on the best hot sauces to use for this? i generally have cholula and tapatio around the house...
The recipe I know was like jm chen's: tomato juice, worcestershire sauce and lime. It tasted like cocktail sauce with beer. I'm not a fan, but then, I'm not a fan of beer either.
@TDS7,
I had miheladas in Playa as well. However, the place we had them was not really Yucatecan. There was def habanero in the salsa but not in the drinks.
In this video, http://www.vimeo.com/3521957, around 1:25 you will see that they bring you the Michelada base already in the glass with ice, then pour the beer over it. The base is very dark, almost black. I think it must be heavy on the worcestershire and soy/maggi and then, most commonly, Valentina hot sauce is used--Valentina is medium hot but pretty thick and savory.
sorry, http://www.vimeo.com/3521957
More points for Michelle O!!
If I could only eat two cuisines for the rest of my life they would be Mexican & Vietnamese.
I had one last night at La Esquina in NYC and I wasn't a fan. Maybe a darker a beer would work better than the Corona mix I was given. Overall it was just too salty.