A real margarita has three ingredients: tequila, orange liqueur and fresh lime juice, at a ratio of 2:1:1. That is two ounces of blanco tequila, one ounce of orange liqueur, one ounce of lime juice, shaken hard with ice. There is no fourth ingredient and there is no mix.
The build
| Ingredient | Amount | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Blanco tequila | 2 oz | Unaged, so the agave is not buried |
| Orange liqueur | 1 oz | Sweetness and body in one pour |
| Fresh lime juice | 1 oz | About half a lime |
Shake with ice for a solid ten seconds. The shake is not optional — it chills the drink and adds the small amount of water that makes it drinkable. Salt the rim of the glass if you want, on the outside only, so the salt does not fall into the drink.
Which orange liqueur
Cointreau Liqueur 750Ml at $41.79 is the benchmark, and it is dry rather than syrupy. Dekuyper Triple Sec 750Ml at $10.99 does the same job for a third of the price and is what most bars actually pour. Either is a real margarita. Buying neither, and reaching for a bottled sweet-and-sour mix, is what makes a bad one.
Why sour mix ruins it
Bottled margarita mix is sugar, citric acid and colouring. It flattens the tequila you just paid for, which is why a homemade margarita so often tastes worse than the bar version even when the tequila is better. One lime costs less than a serving of mix.
How many limes
One supermarket lime gives about an ounce of juice, so one lime is one margarita. Buy one per drink and two spare. Roll each lime hard under your palm on the counter before you cut it — that breaks the pulp inside and gets noticeably more juice out of the same fruit.
Juice them the same day. Fresh lime juice is bright for a few hours and dull by the next morning, which is the single reason bottled juice tastes wrong: it is not fresh, and it never was.
Salting the rim, properly
Cut a notch in a lime wedge and run it around the outside of the rim only, then roll the outside edge in coarse salt on a plate. Salting the inside drops salt into the drink and it gets saltier as you go. Leave a section unsalted so a guest who does not want it has somewhere to drink from.
Use kosher or coarse sea salt. Table salt is too fine and too sharp, and it clumps.
The mistakes, in order of how much they cost you
Bottled mix. Covered above, and it is by far the biggest one.
Not shaking hard enough. Ten seconds, properly cold. A weak shake gives you a drink that is neither chilled nor diluted, and undiluted it tastes harsh.
Aged tequila in the shaker. An añejo in a margarita buries the wood you paid a premium for under lime juice. Use blanco.
Old ice. Ice that has sat in a freezer for a month tastes of the freezer, and so does the drink.
One variation worth knowing
The Tommy's Margarita swaps the orange liqueur for half an ounce of agave syrup: two parts blanco, one part lime, a half part agave. It is less sweet, tastes more of the tequila, and it means you only need one bottle rather than two. If you are buying for yourself rather than for a party, it is arguably the better drink.
Scaling it up
For a pitcher, multiply by eight: 16 oz tequila, 8 oz orange liqueur, 8 oz lime juice. Stir with ice rather than shaking, and make it no more than an hour ahead — fresh lime juice turns dull after that. Keep the pitcher in the fridge, not on the counter, and stir again before pouring, because it separates.
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Prices and stock read from our own inventory when this page was built.
