Down To The Bottom Of A Jar Of Applesauce? Use What's Left To Make A Whiskey Cocktail

If you're like us, your fridge may contain more than a few half-empty containers of various foods and beverages. And if one of those is a jar that still has a smidge of applesauce at the bottom that you haven't gotten around to eating, we've got a tasty way to finish it off: Drink it. Opened applesauce has a shelf life of around 10 days, so time's ticking here. There are a few ways to make a delicious cocktail using applesauce, and they all start with whiskey.

Both bourbon and rye work well with the flavor of apples thanks to their inherent sweetness and penchant towards having tasting notes of the spices you'd be throwing into an apple pie anyway; that is, vanilla, caramel, and cinnamon, among others. Rye is typically spicier and a bit less sweet than bourbon, so it comes down to your taste preferences when mixing up a cocktail with applesauce and whiskey. From there, you can go a few different directions. You can upgrade your classic whiskey sour or combine it with ginger beer and a few other ingredients for a bold and fizzy cocktail. You can also use leftover applesauce for a hot toddy.

For all these various cocktails, you'll need about 2 tablespoons of applesauce per cocktail — but you can eyeball it if need be — and about 2 to 2 ½ ounces of whiskey (you can eyeball this part too). For the apple whiskey sour, ½ ounce to 1 ounce of lemon juice adds the sour to the mix, and if you're so inclined, you can add simple syrup (we prefer ours less sweet). Straining these drinks is the key to making them work since you want the texture to be as smooth as possible. (By the way, super chunky homemade applesauce probably isn't the best kind to use here.) A few dashes of bitters finishes this off.

For a ginger beer and applesauce-based cocktail, combine applesauce, ginger beer, bourbon, and apple cider. The applesauce hot toddy is even simpler. Mix the applesauce with bourbon and hot water and voila. As far as what bourbons to use, High West Bourbon is a good choice as its tasting notes include caramel apple and vanilla, and it comes in at a good price point. Another good option is Old Grand Dad, a bottom shelf bourbon worth trying, which has lots of cinnamon and clove flavors. For rye, try Templeton Rye, with its notes of allspice, butterscotch, and green apple. Once you've tried one or all of these cocktails, you'll never look at a nearly empty jar of applesauce the same way again.