Hurricane

If you've visited New Orleans, you're probably familiar with a cocktail called the Hurricane. Famously served at Pat O'Brien's in the French Quarter, the drink is recognizable by its distinctive glass and technicolor shade of bright red. As a tourist, you might be tempted to lump the it with the other not-so-great cocktails that are readily poured into plastic go-cups for consumption on Bourbon Street. But the Hurricane has a far more respectable history than a Hand Grenade or frozen Daiquiri. And, made correctly, it tastes much better as well. Since Mardi Gras is this week, I thought it was the perfect time to introduce this classic New Orleans drink.

A mixture of rum (a lot of rum), syrup, and fruit juice, the Hurricane is sometimes included in the category of Tiki cocktails. This isn't technically accurate, as Tiki is a very specific movement inspired by Polynesia, and the Hurricane has its roots firmly in New Orleans. But it's definitely an example of convergent evolution in the cocktail world, and you very well might find the Hurricane on a Tiki menu. It fits right in.

So why aren't my Hurricanes that recognizable shade of bright red? Well, not to knock Pat O's - which is totally worth a visit if you're in town - but the Hurricanes served there today are made from an artificial, sugary mix. Which I guess is good news if you want to make yourself a genuine Pat O'Brien's Hurricane at home. But if you're less interested in the nostalgia of your trip to New Orleans and more interested in having a tasty rum cocktail, then you should make your Hurricane from scratch. If you do that, the only bright red ingredient that might be going in is grenadine, and probably just a dash. Your Hurricane should come out closer to the pale orange pictured here.

The original Hurricane was made with three ingredients: gold rum, lemon juice, and a fruit syrup called Fassionola. Since Fassionola hasn't been available for years, most recipes substitute passionfruit syrup. But a bit more goes into Fassionola than just passionfruit: it's a complicated mix of seven tropical juices, dried hibiscus, citric acid, and sugar. Recently Cocktail & Sons came out with a bottled version so you can finally make a genuine Hurricane again. You can also try making your own if you're up for it. I, personally, was not, and Cocktail & Sons is currently sold out, so I used homemade passionfruit syrup.

Perhaps the Fassionola would have given these cocktails the extra bit of complexity they needed, but I wasn't happy with my three-ingredient Hurricanes - I found them a little too tart, a little too simple, and not very reminiscent of the "real thing" from Pat O's. So I started hunting for alternative recipes. There are a lot of them out there. I settled on a variation of Liquor.com's version, which has a little orange juice and grenadine, and uses lime instead of lemon. Perhaps this isn't the "original" Hurricane, but it's the one I like best. Happy Mardi Gras!

History: Pat O'Brien's began its life as a speakeasy during Prohibition. (Supposedly the password to get in was "storm's brewin'.") Once Prohibition ended in December of 1933, it opened legally as Mr. O'Brien's Club Tipperary on the corner of Royal and St. Peter Streets in the French Quarter. In 1942 it moved to its current location on St. Peter.

During World War II, it was difficult for bar owners to get their hands on whiskey, which is what people wanted to drink. Distributors started requiring bars to purchase a certain amount of abundant, easily-obtainable rum for every bottle of whiskey. So Mr. O'Brien found himself with a lot of extra rum lying around and needed a way to convince people to drink it. Thus the Hurricane was born. The actual recipe may have been created by the head bartender at Pat O's, Louis Culligan. The signature glass the drink was served in, shaped like the glass of a hurricane lantern, helped to increase its popularity.

The original hurricane recipe, published by Culligan in Cabaret magazine in 1956, is a simple one: 4 oz. gold rum, 2 oz. lemon juice, and 2 oz. Fassionola.

Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans

Hurricane

2 oz. aged rum
2 oz. white rum
1 oz. lime juice
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. passionfruit syrup*
1 tsp. grenadine

Shake with ice until chilled and strain into a Hurricane glass filled with ice. Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.

*I used the recipe for passionfruit syrup from Smuggler's Cove. First make a 2:1 simple syrup by mixing 2 parts sugar with 1 part water in a saucepan and simmering it until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool completely. Then combine equal parts syrup and passionfruit puree. The best place to find this is your grocery's freezer aisle. Hispanic food stores are also more likely to carry it.

Recipe adapted from Liquor.com. History from Distiller Blog and Wikipedia.