Eggs are our ingredient of the season. That link will take you to our archive of egg posts.
Read on for the most popular hipster of all egg white cocktails: the pisco sour!
Last month we shared the recipe for a lavender lemon gin fizz. That post provides a simple introduction to egg white cocktails. I LOVED that drink, but since I finished the lavender simple syrup, it was time to try something new.
I feel like pisco sours have had a resurgence lately. Really, it seems like all sours are back in fashion, and I’m glad that we didn’t totally miss the boat. With their citrus, sugar, and creamy egg whites, I think you’ll find that these drinks are easy to sip.
Pisco
Pisco is an un-aged brandy produced from fermented grapes. It is currently produced in the wine-making regions of Peru and Chile, where it was developed by Spanish settlers in the 1500s. I bought a color-less pisco from Peru, but other varieties may be a yellow to golden color.
There is a bit of a standoff between both countries when it comes to the liquor and the cocktail. They both claim to be the original of pisco and they both claim the cocktail as their national drink.
Pisco Sour
The pisco sour was developed in Lima, Peru in the 1920s by an American bartender BUT it was a Peruvian bartender who added the egg whites and bitters! The Chilean version is slightly different in that it usually doesn’t include the egg white or bitters and uses powdered sugar.
There are many pisco sour recipes online, and you’ll likely notice one other big difference between the recipes : some call for lemons while others call for limes! Traditionally, limes are used in the Peruvian and Chilean pisco sours, BUT the International Bartenders Association’s recipe uses lemons.
The Wikipedia article on pisco sours goes into great detail about the history of the drink and its nationality… it’s a fun read if you want to go down that rabbit hole. It’s moments like this when I love the collective power of the internet to create a volunteer-generated article about a single cocktail.
Ingredients & Instructions
- 2 oz pisco
- 3/4 oz lime (or lemon!) juice
- 3/4 oz simple syrup (I’m heavy handed with my simple syrup, you can use less if desired)
- 1 egg white
- ice
- Place the gin, simple syrup, lemon juice, and egg white in a blender. Blend on high for a quick 15-30 seconds. You’ll see a nice foam develop, and you’ll know that the white is whipped the right amount.
- Shake the blended ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker.
- Strain and pour over ice into an old fashion glass and enjoy!
*You can read more about my use of a blender here. If you prefer to skip the appliances, then you can do that first shake in the cocktail shaker without ice (dry shake). Just make sure that you get a nice foam from your egg whites. Egg slime is not your sour’s friend.