Why You Should Be Spanking Your Herbs When Making Cocktails

Sitting at the bar and watching the bartender make your drink can be a fascinating experience. Observe closely, and you might even pick up a crafty little trick or two yourself — which you can then use to add some pizzazz to your own tipples back home. You will find them choosing their glassware wisely and then making sure to chill them beforehand; you will see them use the precise golden ratio to build layered cocktails from scratch; and, interestingly, you might notice that they smack herbs between their palms before adding them to your drink. They don't just do this for flair: There is science behind why herbs are spanked, and why you should be doing it too.

Fresh herbs contain essential oils which give them their signature flavor and aroma. While you could just add fresh, unspanked leaves to your cocktail as they are, it won't do much to elevate the drink. Instead, spanking shatters a herb's outer cells and releases those desirable oils, making the overall taste and scent of the herb much stronger. To do so, lay the herb on one palm and give it a quick smack with the other — that's all it really needs. The little step can do wonders for your cocktail, bringing layers of sweet, fresh, salty, and savory depth and complexity that no other ingredient can.

Spanking herbs is a fabulous trick to use when you're adding them inside your cocktail, or when you're using them to garnish the drink. But what about cocktails that ask for herbs to be crushed or muddled? Should you spank the herbs still, or muddle them instead? Well, herbs contain another element besides oils that affects flavor: chlorophyll. Chlorophyll helps with photosynthesis and gives herbs their green hue. But when herbs are aggressively broken down (aka muddled or crushed), the same chlorophyll releases and imparts a bitter flavor into the leaves. This is where spanking comes in: It does just enough to bring out those sought-after oils without releasing the bitter-tasting chlorophyll. 

Even when you're shaking together say a mojito, which requires you to muddle fresh mint leaves and other herbs, the key is to not beat, smash, or hack away at the herb violently — it's a ruinous mistake you're making when muddling cocktails. All you need to do is press the muddler or a spoon onto the leaves and twist them gently. In fact, you don't even have to do that: You can just spank the herbs and toss them straight into the shaker with the other ingredients before pouring the drink. This is all the herbs need to release those oils. Anything more aggressive and the same cool, refreshing mint will turn earthy and grassy, imparting a suspiciously bitter flavor to your cocktail. And wouldn't that be a shame?