Bourbon Spiked Recipes

While doing some research on Epicurious about cold weather whiskey cocktails, I stumbled across a 2015 slideshow of their best bourbon spiked recipes. Since I adore bourbon, I decided to do some investigation. At first glance, it looked like of the eleven recipes nine were desserts and the remaining two were main courses. Since I don’t really know what sorghum is or how easy it is to find locally, the recipe for the Sorghum-Bourbon Pecan Pie did not really appeal to me. And I’m not a fan of bread pudding, so I eliminated the recipe for Pecan, Bourbon, and Butterscotch Bread Pudding. The other recipes, however, all looked good. Since testing nine recipes would be a little excessive, I eliminated the two recipes where the bourbon was only used in a caramel sauce topping. I also decided not to test the cake recipe and the pie recipe because having either in my house would seriously interfere with my weight management plan. That left me with a manageable number of five recipes – three desserts and two mains – to test.

Mixed Grill with Sweet and Spicy Bourbon Sauce

I absolutely love the phenomenal recipe for a Sweet Bourbon Sauce that the brother who cooks contributed to the 2009 version of the family cookbook. Although it uses a wide variety of unexpected ingredients, the sauce is easy enough to pull together on a weeknight and makes enough to use for several days. Of course, it is so good that I don’t mind eating it several days in a row.

With my brother’s recipe in mind, I embarked on the Epicurious recipe for Mixed Grill with Sweet and Spicy Bourbon Sauce. Looking at the ingredients list, I noticed a big problem: it required about eleven pounds of meat for only eight servings! Five pounds of baby back pork ribs, four pounds of beef short ribs, and eight chicken thighs – out of control!!! So I decided to just use two racks of baby back pork ribs, which was about three pounds, and make the necessary adaptations to compensate for the lack of meat pan juices. As usual, I took a few shortcuts in making the marinade. Instead of peeling and mincing 18 cloves of garlic, I used 6 tablespoons of minced garlic from a jar (based on the conversion that one teaspoon equals one clove of garlic). I ran out of tamari, so I used closer to 2/3 cup rather than the required ¾ cup. And instead of two tablespoons of fresh minced ginger, I used two tablespoons of minced ginger from a tube. Although it was a bit challenging to get all the molasses dissolved in the rather scant amount of liquid, the initial marinade was excellent: a good balance of sweet and savory. I followed the recipe instructions to let the ribs rest for 30 minutes after seasoning with salt and pepper, and then rest again for an hour after adding the marinade. I also followed the recipe instructions to bake the ribs covered in foil for 45 minutes and then boil down the juices with two tablespoons of bourbon. However, I then departed from the recipe instructions because it was too cold and dark out for me to start up my gas grill. The pork ribs were already cooked (internal temperature of 165F) when I took them out of the oven after 45 minutes, so they just needed a good glazing. Rather than put the separated ribs on the grill for 12 to 15 minutes and baste with the reserved marinade, I coated the separated ribs with the thickened bourbon sauce and put them on the top rack of the oven at 400F for 15 minutes.

The baby back pork ribs with Sweet and Spicy Bourbon Sauce were very good, albeit very messy. The sauce was more spicy than sweet, despite the high proportion of brown sugar and molasses relative to the chili pepper and sriracha. Overall, I really enjoyed them. I went back into the refrigerator for one or two more ribs as a late night snack because they were so good!

Of course, after trying the Epicurious recipe, I had to make my brother’s recipe for comparison. I used to make this recipe all the time, but it seems like forever since I’ve made it. I was happy to discover that it was as easy as I remember it to be. Just chop some onion and garlic and throw that in a saucepan with olive oil (line one). Once that is translucent, add water, pineapple juice, and brown sugar (line two) and bring to a boil. After that is boiling, add maple syrup, soy sauce, and hoisin sauce (line three) and reduce to a simmer. Add one shot of bourbon to the sauce, one shot of bourbon to the cook, diced red pepper to the sauce, and cayenne pepper to the sauce (line four). Simmer for an hour or until thick. Ta dah! It is ready to use as an incredibly delicious syrupy glaze. The only step I skipped was the shot of bourbon to the cook because I was recipe testing a summer spritz cocktail and didn’t want to mess with my enjoyment of that cocktail.

Because I finished cooking my brother’s recipe at around ten at night, I didn’t use it immediately. Although the sauce had noticeably reduced in the pot, it was still fairly thin when I refrigerated it overnight in a large glass salsa jar. Unfortunately, it was still fairly thin when I went to use the sauce on some baked boneless chicken breast for lunch the next afternoon. But it tasted awesome. There is no other way to describe it. The sauce was the perfect balance of sweet and spicy, thanks to that quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper dashed in at the end.

Since I still had some clean marinade leftover from the Epicurious recipe, I did a side-by-side taste test between the two. I had really thought that the Epicurious marinade was good but, compared to my brother’s recipe, it tasted very heavily of tamari and chili powder. I definitely won’t be trading in my brother’s recipe any time soon.

Bourbon Balls

Rum balls are one of my family’s traditional Christmas cookies. They are so simple to make that I whipped up a batch during my Holiday Baking Marathon to mail out to my military friends. Our recipe is essentially mixing six cups of confectioners’ sugar, crushed vanilla wafers, and ground walnuts with a few tablespoons of cocoa powder, and then binding that together with a little honey (or corn syrup) and some rum. The hardest part about the recipe is being Zen enough to endure the tedious task of rolling the mixture into small balls and coating them with confectioners’ sugar.

So I was interested to learn how the results of a more complex recipe for Bourbon Balls compared with our family recipe. Would the extra work be worth it? More importantly, would I be able to get the cookies finished before meeting my friends for a noontime movie? I did manage to get the dough finished and chilled, and then half of the dough rolled into cookies and coated with confectioners’ sugar to give away to my friends. But I had to move quickly to get all that accomplished. Unlike the family recipe, the Epicurious recipe requires heating together heavy cream, corn syrup, and ground cinnamon until just boiling, pouring that over chopped chocolate, and stirring until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth. Once the chocolate mixture has cooled slightly, the bourbon is stirred in and then the chocolate mixture is poured over a mixture of crushed vanilla wafers and ground pecans. After that is well combined, it is chilled for at least 30 minutes. Then the chilled dough is formed into small balls and coated with confectioners’ sugar, crushed vanilla wafers, or ground pecans. Confectioners’ sugar was the easiest for me since I had a lot of it on hand.

Of course, my biggest complaint about the Epicurious recipe was that it dirtied four bowls: one pot for heating together the cream, corn syrup, and cinnamon; one bowl for melting the chocolate; one bowl for finishing the cookie; one bowl for rolling the finished cookie in confectioners’ sugar. My friends, however, had no complaints and really enjoyed the combination of the chocolate and the bourbon.

Bourbon Butterscotch Pudding

I love butterscotch pudding. However, the most difficult butterscotch pudding recipe that I’ve ever attempted involves a package of Jell-O Cook ‘n’ Serve butterscotch pudding, where the greatest challenge is to prevent the milk from scalding on the bottom of the pan.

I was interested to learn how the more complex recipe for Bourbon Butterscotch Pudding compared with the Jell-O recipe. Reading the recipe, it seemed like it was going to go very quickly – three minutes at the first step, two minutes at the next step, five minutes at the final step – so I invested the time in setting up a solid mise en place. Only after I had all my ingredients measured and my equipment set up, did I start the recipe. And the recipe did move very quickly: before I knew it, the butter was melted and browned, and it was time to add the brown sugar. Then the brown sugar was melted, and it was time to add the milk mixture, which I had made ahead. Then that started to bubble, so it was time to gradually whisk that into the egg yolk mixture, which I had also done ahead. Once that was all incorporated, I strained it through my finest sieve and set it back on medium heat to bubble and thicken. After that happened, I transferred it to my blender and blended until smooth. And that was it! At the beginning of the recipe, I substituted one tablespoon of high quality vanilla bean paste for one vanilla bean, per the substitution instructions on the bottle of vanilla bean paste. The only other part of the recipe that I didn’t follow was to portion the recipe into eight six-ounce ramekins, which I think I have, because I didn’t have enough room in the refrigerator to lay those all out. So I poured the blended custard into a large bowl, and wedged that into the refrigerator to chill until set.

There were two things about the recipe that made me a little nervous. First, that it went so fast that I absolutely had to have everything ready to go or else it would be burned or curdled or otherwise failed. Second, that it required at least three transfers of very hot liquid, which had the potential for disaster. The hot milk mixture went into the egg yolk mixture, and then that all went back into the pot, and then after that started bubbling, it went into the blender. This definitely was not a recipe for a novice or a timid cook!

Tasting the dregs of the Bourbon Butterscotch Pudding as I was cleaning up the pot and the blender, I found it to be delicious. It was so good that I actually set the kitchen timer for two hours so I wouldn’t open the refrigerator and disturb the pudding that was chilling there. I had a small bowl after dinner the following day when the pudding was good and set. The pudding was truly delicious. It had a real butterscotch flavor to it and was both thick and smooth. Much better than I remember the Jell-O Cook ‘n’ Serve ever being. It took some honest to goodness self-restraint not to go back to the refrigerator for seconds!

Of course, I wanted to make a package of Jell-O Cook ‘n’ Serve butterscotch pudding for comparison, but the supermarket only carried sugar free instant butterscotch pudding. So I whipped up some of that, which was super easy. Nothing more than measuring the milk, whisking for two minutes, and refrigerating for a few minutes more. Unfortunately the taste was rather insipid. It didn’t taste like butterscotch at all. And, while I was tempted to whisk in a few tablespoons of bourbon, I didn’t do it. I’m not sure why not. That probably would have improved the flavor.

Bourbon Sea Salt Caramels

Successfully completing the Homemade Caramel Class last October has only increased my fascination with caramel making. So, when I saw that there was a caramel recipe in the Epicurious gallery list of bourbon spiked recipes, I immediately wanted to try it. Of course, I did exercise some restraint and waited to conduct my experiment until the Friday before the gingerbread house construction party so that I would have friends to share the caramel with.

The recipe itself was a combination of the technique that we learned in caramel class and the technique used in the ricotta orange caramel recipe from the advance reader copy about Chelsea Market that I read last year. First, the sugar, corn syrup, and water are cooked over medium high heat to a deep amber without stirring – just swirling the pan occasionally to even out the hot spots. I’m really grateful that the recipe gave a time estimate for this step because it was difficult to see the color of the syrup beneath the bubbles until it was almost too late. Once the caramel base was made, it was removed from the heat and sweetened condensed milk and butter were whisked into the mixture. The mixture basically went volcanic when I started to whisk in the sweetened condensed milk, which was a little frightening. After everything is combined and the mixture is smooth, it is returned to medium low heat and constantly whisked until it reaches 240F on a candy thermometer. Since the chef in caramel class taught us how to use an instant read thermometer in caramel making, I used that instead of a candy thermometer because it is easier to read and more accurate. The first time I took the temperature it was 237F. So I took the temperature again almost as soon as I had finished cleaning the probe with an alcohol swab, and it read 242F. At that point, I removed the mixture from the heat and whisked in the bourbon (more volcanic action) and then the teensy bit of kosher salt. As soon as it was smooth and well combined, I poured the caramel into an oiled silicone pan to set. The recipe called for sprinkling with sea salt once set, but I had a grinder of coffee, cardamom, and rock sugar that I thought would be complementary. So I used that instead.

Tasting the dregs of the caramel from the spatula and the pan, I thought it was very good. It was stiffer and richer than the ricotta orange caramel recipe from last year’s Chelsea Market advance reader copy. When I served it to my friends at the gingerbread house construction party, they all loved it, but really couldn't taste the bourbon. But they agreed it was much better than the Chelsea Market recipe that I served at my holiday dessert party.

Bourbon Glazed Chicken Drumettes with Blue Cheese Dipping Sauce

This recipe did not get very good reviews on Epicurious: 2.5 out of 4.0 based on 11 reviews. The major complaints were that it tasted like ketchup and tomato paste rather than bourbon; therefore, the most helpful recommendation amid the reviews was to increase the bourbon from one cup to one and a half cups. I decided that I would go with that recommendation and see if it made any difference.

I made some slight changes to the ingredients. Rather than measuring one cup of chopped onion, I just chopped one fairly large sweet onion and used the whole thing. I substituted roughly two tablespoons of minced garlic from a jar for the three cloves of thinly sliced garlic. Since I live in the North East, I couldn’t find Crystal’s in my supermarket, so I used Frank’s Original Red Hot. I also used three pounds of chicken wings, which I split into the wing and the drumette, because just drumettes were not available at my supermarket. Since the recipe might be a loser, rather than use my good Buffalo Trace bourbon, I decided to use my unloved bottle of Jim Beam Red Stag bourbon, which has natural black cherry flavoring added to it.

As far as the method went, I followed the instructions fairly faithfully, with one exception. At the last cooking step, rather than whisking each ingredient individually into the onion-garlic-bourbon pot on the stove, I whisked together the bourbon, ketchup, and other ingredients in a separate bowl to make a sauce and then I whisked that sauce into the pot. That seemed to work better overall because the separate sauce did require a lot of whisking to smooth it out into a cohesive whole. Otherwise, I adhered to the boiling and simmering times. The finished sauce really had a punch of the hot pepper sauce at first, and then some of the tomato and other flavors kicked in. Rather than marinate in a glass baking dish, I marinated in a sealed gallon plastic bag because that was easier to fit into my crowded refrigerator. As much as I hated to dirty my favorite cooling rack, I used that to lay out the wings and drumettes over a foil lined baking tin. Although the recipe said to bake at 375F for 45 minutes, I found that the internal temperature of the wings in the center of the pan was only 150F, which is unsafe, so I baked them for an additional 15 minutes to bring the internal temperature up to a safe 165F.

The finished wings didn’t taste much differently than the finished sauce: the Frank’s Red Hot was the predominant flavor. I may have gotten a very similar result with less effort if I had just marinated the wings in Frank’s Red Hot and melted butter. I decided to skip making the blue cheese dipping sauce because I had two bottles of Brianna’s blue cheese salad dressing in my kitchen cabinet (it was on a twofer sale). In the end, I just ate the wings without any dipping sauce of any kind to avoid the unnecessary extra calories.

After picking at the wings for two meals, I packed the remainder into a gallon plastic bag and brought them to a friend with a teenage son. She was happy to report that he absolutely loved them!

The Verdict

Having worked on so many alcohol themed posts recently made me wonder whether the bourbon really was necessary in these recipes. For all but one of the recipes, the answer is that the bourbon isn’t necessary. For the one recipe where the bourbon is necessary, there is a nonalcoholic substitute that changes the character of the recipe, but still produces a good result.

The way I made the Sweet and Spicy Bourbon Marinade from Epicurious only added two tablespoons of bourbon to the pan juices from roasting the pork and then used that to baste the pork before broiling it. That was such a small amount of bourbon that it burned off either as I boiled it to thicken the sauce or as I broiled the ribs. So the marinade could probably be safely made without the bourbon. Same thing with my brother’s Sweet Bourbon Sauce: a shot of bourbon is added before simmering for an hour so the alcohol is probably all burned off. It too could be safely made without the bourbon.

The boozy bourbon flavor is the primary attraction of the Bourbon Balls; however, the recipe can most likely be altered to substitute coffee for bourbon to make it nonalcoholic. That substitution would definitely change the flavor of the cookie, but it would still be a rich chocolate treat. I’ve made that substitution with the family Rum Ball recipe with some success. By the way, the Bourbon Balls can also be made gluten free if you substitute gluten free cookies, such as gluten free ginger snaps or gluten free graham crackers, for the vanilla wafers.

The Bourbon Butterscotch Pudding only uses one tablespoon of bourbon to the three and a half cups of heavy cream and milk. The amount of bourbon is so minimal that I guessed at a short pour rather than dirty a measuring spoon. There is so much butterscotch flavor from the brown sugar and brown butter that the bourbon flavor is imperceptible. The bourbon could safely be omitted from the recipe for a nonalcoholic version.

The Bourbon Sea Salt Caramels only use two tablespoons of bourbon in a recipe that yields an entire 8x8 pan of caramel, which is about one hundred pieces. The amount of bourbon was so scant that it was barely noticeable. No one will know if you leave it out. Especially since some of it most likely evaporates during the volcanic eruption that occurs when it is added to the hot caramel!

I wouldn’t recommend making the Epicurious recipe for Bourbon Glazed Chicken Drumettes. Even increasing the bourbon to 1½ cups, the recipe still just tasted like hot pepper sauce. If you are looking to make an alcohol free version of that recipe – or any version for that matter – I recommend grabbing a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot or Crystal’s or whatever hot pepper sauce is available in your region, mixing that with some melted butter, and using that mixture as a chicken wing marinade. You’ll get about the same flavor with less effort.

The Recipes

My Brother’s Sweet Bourbon Sauce
This stuff is the best. Left over sauce keeps well in a non-reactive container in the fridge.
Line 1: 7 cloves garlic, smashed, ½ onion, minced, 1 tbsp olive oil
Line 2: 1 cup water, 1 cup pineapple juice, 1½ cup brown sugar
Line 3: ¼ cup soy sauce, 2 tbsp hoisin sauce, ¼ cup maple syrup
Line 4: 2 shots bourbon whiskey, 1 red pepper, chopped, ¼ tsp cayenne pepper

1. Add the first line into a saucepan and sauté until translucent.
2. Add the second line, dissolve sugar and bring to boil.
3. Add the third line and reduce to a simmer.
4. Add the fourth line: one shot to sauce, one shot to the cook, and continue simmering until volume is reduced to about half (approximately 1 hour).
5. Makes a syrupy glaze for use after grilling, broiling or sautéing chicken, shrimp, beef, scallops, pork or onion rings.

Rum Balls
This recipe was previously posted in the Holiday Baking Marathon post, but bears repeating. You can make these weeks ahead of time and keep refrigerated – they get better with age.
2 cups crushed vanilla wafers
2 cups confectioners' sugar (plus extra)
2 cups ground walnuts
4 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp honey
½ cup rum, whiskey, Kahlua, amaretto, other liquor or coffee

1. Combine crushed vanilla wafers, confectioners' sugar, nuts and cocoa powder
2. Add rum and honey
3. Shape into balls; coat with additional confectioners' sugar
4. Chill until firm

♥ To make things really easy, use graham cracker crumbs from a box instead of crushing vanilla wafers.
♥ Chopped nuts are really optional, but it may be necessary to use more vanilla wafers to absorb the liquid. The recipe works without honey, but it would be better to use it when possible.
♥ Do NOT refrigerate dough before rolling. It will be too brittle to work with, but still can be cut into small squares like fudge.
♥ If the dough is too sticky to roll into balls, add equal parts of crushed wafers and confectioners' sugar until the dough is dry enough. (Okay, you can also use just confectioners' sugar if you want, but it doesn't work as well.)