Helpful Techniques: Cordials
For anyone who is a fan of cocktail books, witchy or otherwise, the term “cordial” gets thrown around quite a bit. Once you get accustomed to making these, they become an valuable tool in any intentional kitchen, giving you a massive amount of easy customization for your works.
What is a cordial?
A cordial is a flavored, sweetened syrup consisting of multiple flavors added to it. You add pretty much anything into these, ranging from teas to fresh herbs, vegetables, fruits, and spices.
How do you make a cordial?
The basis of most cordials is a simple syrup: an equal mix of water and sugar, heated and stirred until all of the sugar is dissolved. From there, you have two opportunities to add flavor, either while the syrup is being heated or after the syrup has been cooled.
For dried herbs, dried fruits, spices, and teas, it’s better to add these while the syrup is still heating. Once the sugar is dissolved, add your ingredients to the pot and reduce the heat to simmer. let it simmer for between 5 and 15 minutes, then remove from the heat. Allow to cool down to room temperature, strain, and then bottle.
For fresh fruits, vegetables, fresh herbs, and most juices, we want to add these to the syrup after it’s cooled. Remove the syrup from the heat, and bring down at least to room temperature. Once cooled, add your syrup and any ingredients you want to a blender, and blend until smooth. Whereas you can strain this out immediately and it will be fine, you will get more flavor and intentions out of it if you allow it to sit for at least 30 minutes (up to overnight is fine, as long as it’s refrigerated). After it’s strained, bottle and enjoy!
Why should you make a cordial?
Cordials are quite a bit of work to make, there’s no denying that. However, cordials allow for three main factors that I believe make them worth while.
Flexibility: Cordials are an extremely easy thing to integrate into your daily life once you have them made. They can be added to teas, coffees, or juices for easy beverages through out your day. You can use them to make delightful cocktails if that’s more your speed, or making sodas at home by adding this to club soda.
Customization: When you’re making your own cordials, there’s no limit to the intentions, flavors, and uses that you can use them for. It is an extremely efficient method of combining multiple ingredients that work together for your intentions into one ingredient, instead of having to use multiple sources each day. Cordials have become my go to for any sort of major holiday because I can match whatever the theme of the holiday is to the cordial I make.
Longevity: When we look at adding more things into our daily life, making things easy and convenient is the first major thing we have to accomplish. Once we have a cordial strained out, they will last for between 2-4 weeks in the fridge, and even longer if you have access to air tight bottles. This gives you the ability to batch these in advance when you have a bit of time, and take advantage of it on days when you are busy.
What are some types of cordials you can make?
Cordials are really limited only by your imagination; you can really go nuts with this type of stuff. Some examples I’ve done recently have been a strawberry, basil, and cherry pepper cordial, and a citrus and chili flake cordial. Also, look out for a wonderful summer time energy boost featuring apricots, ginger, and Sichuan peppercorns coming up from us shortly! Drop some examples in the comments of cordials you used before, or ingredients you’d love to see thrown into one!