Over the years, we’ve looked at lots of novel ways to improve cocktails, including adding a miniscule dose of a saline solution, butter-washing the alcohol with flavorful bacon fat, infusing your drink with smoked ice, and even adding MSG to make the dirtiest martini possible. Now, Senior Editor Lan Lam has investigated rice-washing, a technique that originated with a trio of Brooklyn, N.Y., bartenders.
Cooking Tips
For a Smoother Cocktail, Add Rice
Home mixologists can use this simple technique to transform any cocktail.
By Published Feb. 21, 2024.
Inspired by horchata, a sweet, starchy Mexican beverage made from raw rice and milk, Leanne Favre, head bartender at Leyenda, a coctelería in Brooklyn, teamed up with New York bartenders Tom Macy and Shannon Ponche to create a “rice-washed” negroni called the Negroni de Nubes that’s less brash and more cohesive than a typical negroni.
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How Does Rice-Washing Work?
Banish any thoughts that it means mixing rice into a cocktail and leaving it to settle at the bottom of the cocktail glass, where you’d run the risk of swallowing the grains. To rice-wash a drink, you stir the components of the cocktail together with the ice in a mixing glass, then strain both out before serving.
Lam tried the technique herself, stirring raw rice into the standard negroni formula of equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. The resulting cocktail looked slightly opaque and tasted exceptionally smooth. It was also less bitter than a regular negroni, with a more subtle aroma and a fuller, rounder texture.
Why Does Rice-Washing Smooth Out a Cocktail?
These effects are all due to the rice’s starch, which captures volatile compounds such as methanol and propanol, which give alcohol its boozy taste, as well as aromatic esters and aldehydes. “Removing” these compounds from the equation allows us to notice other aromas and flavors in the cocktail, similar to the way a couple of drops of water in a glass of neat whiskey “opens it up”.
The rice starch also lends body and haze because the starch molecules floating in the drink disrupt how light passes through the cocktail.
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How to Rice-Wash a Cocktail Yourself
Rice-washing will transform any shaken or stirred cocktail, not just a negroni.
Method: Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of raw white rice with the ice per 3-ounce cocktail (the more rice, the more profound the effect), stir until the drink is properly chilled, and then strain through a fine-mesh strainer. Note that your yield will decrease slightly because the rice absorbs some of the liquid.
