Cold Drink

This simple, low-alcohol summertime cocktail only needs two ingredients: fragrant Pimm’s liqueur and some ginger ale or ginger beer.

With flavors that are bright and complex from a mixture of nuts, seeds, spices, and rose petals, thandai is the ideal drink for Holi celebrations.

This spice mix can be used to make thandai to drink for holi, or baked into an assortment of sweets.

Making this cocktail is as simple as it gets; you only need dark rum, ginger beer, and a quick squeeze of lime.

Starring two bitter Italian liqueurs, bourbon, and lemon juice, this four-ingredient cocktail is as easy to make as it is to sip.

The most refreshing pitcher of raspberry lemonade starts with homemade fresh raspberry syrup.

Raspberry syrup appears over and over in some of the most influential historic cocktail books. 

Made with sweetened black tea, milk, and black tapioca pearls, this classic milk tea recipe is sweet, creamy, and delicious.

The virgin piña colada already exists. This nonalcoholic piña colada goes further, in search of balance and complexity.

Tamer Hindi is a refreshing sweet and sour beverage—made with tamarind, water, and sugar—that’s popular during the month of Ramadan.

An agua fresca made with fermented pineapple rind, tepache is wonderful not only because of its flavor but because you are using what would otherwise be scraps.

Reverse the typical relationship between iced tea and ice cubes by using cubes that impart more flavor into the glass as they melt and mingle instead of diluting the drink.

Scorpion bowls are heavily boozed, sugared, and communally shared. These updated Apéritif Scorpion Bowls keep the fun and ditch the sting.

To make delicious iced chai, finely grind the spices to extract their flavors, then simmer the spices and tea in milk to fully hydrate them.

Super fresh soy milk is easy to make at home and, frankly, tastes leagues better than the stuff sold in boxes.

Serve this with a bowl of potato chips (Utz, please) and another little bowl of extra olives and sit outside with a friend. That’s all I have to say about that!

While it is not uncommon to find ginger blended into limeades, lemonades, and fresh sugarcane juice in India, it also pairs nicely with tamarind. Serve cold and give it a good stir before drinking.    This recipe is made with tamarind pulp, which contains large seeds that you will need to remove. Avoid the temptation to use concentrates. They’re more convenient because they don’t have seeds, but they don’t taste nearly as fresh.

This tea is brilliantly red and sweet-tart, with a delicious bite from ginger and aromas of clove and citrus

Chia seeds look like poppy seeds, but when soaked in liquid for a while, they bloom and develop an awesome gummy texture. This limeade is made using the whole lime, which gives it a slight bitterness, but trust me: it’s so good you won’t want to make it any other way.

The literal translation of the name of this drink is “the Virgin’s tears,” as the red color of the beets resembles tears of blood said to have been shed by the Virgin Mary. This beverage originated in the state of Guanajuato, maybe as long ago as the end of the sixteenth century. I found a few different variations, but this one seemed to be the most common, and it’s quite special. Although this beverage is customarily prepared during Lent for the festivities of Friday of Sorrows (the Friday before Good Friday), it’s a wonderful drink during fall, when beets and apples abound. This recipe makes a large batch to share at your next gathering.

This refreshing nonalcoholic drink recipe is flexible and easy to make. Adjust the sweetness levels to your taste and swap in whatever ripe fruit you have on hand.

Aguas frescas, water-based fruit drinks, are a cool way to make your fresh fruit go further—especially in the summertime when you might have a larger watermelon than you know what to do with, or peaches that are starting to shrivel.

Agua de limón, or Key lime water, is probably the most common agua fresca. This recipe is a fun spin on the traditional, using lemons instead of Key limes and adding avocado to acknowledge the very classic combination of citrus and avocado, but out of their normal context. 

This version of horchata mixes both the nut version and the rice version in what is a creamy, rich, and very satisfying drink.