Round a Christmas dinner desk in New Jersey in 2018, I gathered with a bunch of fellow Caribbean transplants to potluck the classics: home made rolls, baked ham, beef pastelles, ponche de crème and, in fact, sorrel. After I gulped down a mouthful of the acquainted, ruby-colored drink, I virtually choked from an surprising taste—a burn?
“Oh, you didn’t know?” the Trini hostess mentioned with fun. “Jamaicans add ginger.”
I had not been forewarned. Whereas the rum within the sorrel—a typical addition to the drink—introduced a punch I used to be accustomed to, I used to be not anticipating the depth of a closely gingered brew. The drink in my glass regarded just like the candy tea I grew up with in Trinidad, but it surely was one thing fairly completely different totally.
Years later, I ordered a sorrel ginger lemonade at Lips Cafe in Flatbush, Brooklyn, now ready for the chest burn. However this time, the drink had a heightened heat of the vacation spices of cinnamon and star anise, enhanced by simply the right accent of ginger within the sorrel-lemonade hybrid. I cherished it. Had I change into a Jamaican sorrel convert?
Should you ask any Trini, they’ll let you know that their Christmas is the very best. It’s a truth outlined in Susan Macio’s aptly named “Trini Christmas Is the Greatest,” a music that lists the standard meals and drinks of a superb Trinbagonian Christmas, together with, in fact, sorrel. However different Caribbean individuals would possibly disagree with this assertion: Every island has distinct interpretations and strategies of getting ready Caribbean meals, and every island claims that theirs is superior. Sorrel lands smack dab in the midst of an intraregional debate, particularly between Trinidad and Jamaica. Jamaicans, as I had discovered, embody ginger of their model, and Trinidadians adamantly go away it out. Whereas most Trinbagonians outright reject the burning aftertaste of the spice, Jamaicans can’t get sufficient.
Merely posing the query, as I did on X, conjures up fierce debate. Trinbagonian chef Brigette Joseph, who works in each Trinidad and Jamaica, confesses to buying a style for a small contact of ginger in her recipe, however not an excessive amount of of it, “not 5lb of ginger to burn my chest,” she wrote. “Have to really feel the burn,” insisted one other response, whereas one other referred to as ginger in sorrel “an abomination.”
As a result of strategies for making sorrel are handed down alongside household strains, there is no such thing as a single conventional recipe to make it, however there are commonalities throughout variations. Sorrel is made like a tea, although extra sometimes called a juice within the Caribbean. It’s spiced with a balancing act of cinnamon, clove, star anise, bay leaf and nutmeg, and reserved specifically for the vacation season. Served over ice, it has the candy tartness of currants, the cheer of mulled wine and the refreshing wash of cold-pressed fruit juice.
To make the tea, brew the calyx (the fleshy half beneath the flower petals, which holds them collectively) of a deep purple or black Hibiscus sabdariffa along with the spices, after which sweeten with copious quantities of white sugar, yielding a powerful, syrupy liquid. Each dried and recent sorrel can be utilized to make the brew and end in completely different tastes. Whereas the dried flowers yield a extra sturdy, barely bitter, acidic and tannic taste, and rapidly produce that desired opaque garnet shade, the drink’s style is much less fruity and floral than when it’s made with the recent calyces. Some add orange segments (or simply the peel) to their variations to revive a little bit of vibrancy.
One other iteration, whose origins supposedly return to a contented accident when a batch was omitted too lengthy, is fermented, providing a refined fizz. Generally, the addition of rice thickens the drink throughout this course of, including extra physique and richness. And in New York, the place the Caribbean diaspora merges varied island methods, it is not uncommon to let the sorrel steep within the spiced, boiled water for a few days earlier than straining and refrigerating for extra intense taste. Some recipes additionally embody the addition of bitters.
One factor all islands can agree on, although, is that sorrel flawlessly combines with rum—notably white rum, a lot in order that Angostura added a sorrel taste to its White Oak line in 2019. With its shiny purple shade and herbaceous taste, sorrel is a flexible (and beautiful) ingredient for cocktails. In some rum-spiked recipes, the spirit is added to the brew instantly, blended in with the sugar. Jamaican recipes have a tendency so as to add in each Wray & Nephew overproof white rum and the model’s fortified Purple Label Wine. In any other case, the chilled juicy tea is solely used as a chaser for rum on the rocks.
On New York’s Decrease East Facet, the Caribbean bar Las’ Lap has served completely different rum-based sorrel cocktails through the years. This December, the bar has created the Sorrenity, which mixes aged rum and St-Germain with citrus, sweetness and an oz of sorrel for a punchy, floral drink. Las’ Lap makes its personal tea for the cocktail, however as with all issues sorrel, the precise combine is as much as you. Make it nonetheless you get pleasure from it finest.
