Give Shrimp Cocktail A Boozy Twist With This Spirit

Shrimp cocktail is the elegant seafood dish that you can have poised on the edge of a fancy glass almost as fast as you can boil water for poaching. Sure, you'll need to chill them, too, but these petite suckers cool almost as quickly as they cook, and a three-ingredient cocktail sauce comes together in a snap. But you can also upgrade the little crustaceans' signature accompaniment with a bit of tequila for a smokier, fruitier, or even spicier sauce.

The trick to spiking your cocktail sauce is not to let it get too thin. Slightly more elaborate but still super easy varieties will typically combine ketchup, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, and lemon juice, so you don't have many liquids to swap out in lieu of the booze. Add only about a tablespoon of tequila to each half-cup portion of cocktail sauce, stir to combine while monitoring consistency, and repeat until you reach the desired effect. It's unlikely that you'll end up exceeding about a shot, unless you really love a thin, high-ABV condiment.

Cooking with alcohol is an ancient practice that has found a home in the contemporary kitchen.  Scour a modern cookbook, and you'll likely find several recipes that factor in liquor. As one example, you can swap water for beer when poaching a very shrimp cocktail. If you're cocktailing shrimp as a starter for a full seafood feast, you can add the traditional wine, or you can change things up by adding beer-steamed mussels to the menu. And, unique as it is, she-crab soup just wouldn't be the same without its signature sherry. Now, most of these preparations alone won't give many folks much of a buzz, but when grouped together, you may want to adjust your actuarial libations accordingly.

These ingredient switcharoos work in reverse, too. Some of your more over-the-top bloody Marys have been known to spear a lobster claw among more vegetal garnishes. Beef broth has been known to make its way into bloodies, too, as well as the evocatively named bull shot. Bacon, the 2010s' favorite fat, has also made its way into plenty of bourbon via infusion, and also back in garnish territory in tipples like different interpretations of an old fashioned.