Weird Cocktail Ingredients That Actually Work (and a Few That Don't)

Some of the best cocktail ingredients in our kitchen live on the condiment shelf, wedged between the mustard and a jar of capers nobody remembers buying. Pickle brine, Worcestershire, a bottle of soy sauce. They sound like a dare. A surprising number of them make good drinks, and the ones that do all work for reasons you can taste: salt, acid, savoriness, fat or texture.

We went through our recipe database looking for the strangest ingredients people actually mix with, and sorted them into the ones we’d happily serve and the ones we’ll leave to braver souls.

Pickle brine

The pickleback started as a bar trick: a shot of whiskey followed straight away by a shot of pickle brine. The salty, sour brine wipes out the burn, and the dill lingers in a way that’s oddly refreshing. Salt and vinegar are both strong palate cleansers, and that’s all the trick is.

You don’t need a bar to try it. The Pickled Ruski is just vodka and pickle juice, a savory sipper for anyone who drinks the brine straight from the jar anyway. The Lockness Monster is the same pairing with a whole pickle dropped in as garnish. And the Dirty Rollie Fingers adds Tabasco to pickle brine and vodka, which takes it into spicy Bloody Mary territory without the tomato. We like a ratio of about one part brine to two parts vodka, very cold.

Clamato and Worcestershire

Clamato is tomato juice blended with clam broth and spices, and it’s milder than it sounds. The clam adds savoriness more than seafood flavor, the same deep, meaty quality that Worcestershire and soy sauce bring. That savory backbone makes a drink taste fuller and rounder, which is why tomato drinks get so much from a few dashes of either.

Canada’s national cocktail, the Caesar, is built on Clamato. It was created in Calgary in 1969 and is basically a Bloody Mary with Clamato standing in for tomato juice. Our Clamato Cocktail splits the difference, using vodka with both tomato juice and Clamato. The Beer and Clamato is even simpler, a pour of Clamato into a cold lager. It’s a common order in Mexico and Canada and a great one on a warm afternoon.

Worcestershire turns up in more drinks than you’d guess. The Bannockburn is a scotch-based tomato drink, smoky and savory, and the Hot Tequila mixes aged tequila with Worcestershire and Tabasco for a savory shooter. If tequila and tomato appeal, Mexico’s own sangrita is the chaser to know.

Soy sauce

This one is more curiosity than classic. The Black Samurai pairs sake with a splash of soy sauce, and the logic is the same as Worcestershire: salt and savoriness. We’d go very light, a few drops at most, since soy goes from interesting to overwhelming in a hurry. Our favorite use is actually two drops in a Bloody Mary in place of some of the Worcestershire.

Egg, which isn’t really weird

Eggs only seem weird if you’ve never ordered a sour at a cocktail bar. Shaken hard, egg white proteins unfold and trap air, giving a drink a silky texture and a thick foam cap with almost no flavor. A whole egg goes further and makes a flip, rich and custardy, close to a light eggnog.

The Port Flip is port, a whole egg and a little sugar, shaken until frothy. Grate a little nutmeg on top if you have it. It’s lovely on a cold night. The Golden Slipper is an old curiosity that combines apricot brandy, yellow Chartreuse and egg. For a white-only drink, the Polished Princess shakes vanilla vodka with lemon, cranberries, pumpkin spice and egg white. Use the freshest eggs you can find, or pasteurized ones if you’re cautious. There’s more technique, including the dry shake, in our guide to egg white cocktails.

Bacon, olive oil and other fats

Fat-washing is how bartenders get bacon into a drink without leaving grease on top. You stir melted fat into a spirit, let it sit, then freeze the bottle until the fat hardens into a solid layer. Strain it off and the flavor stays behind while the grease doesn’t. The most famous example is the Benton’s Old Fashioned at New York’s PDT, made with bourbon washed in bacon fat. Brown butter and olive oil work the same way, and olive oil fat-washed gin makes a wonderfully soft martini.

We don’t have a fat-washed recipe in our database yet. But if you try it, use the bacon bourbon in a Maple Old Fashioned, bourbon with maple syrup and bitters. Bacon and maple belong together on a breakfast plate and in a glass.

Butter by itself, no washing needed, goes into hot drinks. The Hot Buttered Jim melts a pat of butter into hot water and Jim Beam, a bourbon cousin of hot buttered rum and a nice thing to hold when the first frost hits.

Candy

Candy works in cocktails because it’s mostly sugar and citric acid, which is half of what goes into a sour anyway, plus a lot of color. Drop Skittles into vodka, give it a day or so, and they dissolve into a bright, fruity infusion. Our Skittle Vodka is exactly that, and the full method, including sorting by color, is in our Skittles vodka guide. The Jolly Joker does the same with Jolly Rancher candies.

Pop Rocks are pure theater. The candy holds tiny pockets of pressurized carbon dioxide that crackle when they get wet. Rim a glass with them, or drop them in at the table, for the Melon Popper, Midori with Pop Rocks, or the Lynchburg Mine Explosion, Jack Daniel’s and 7 Up with a sprinkle on top. They fizz out in seconds, so add them last, right before the glass hits the table.

Finding these drinks is easier when you search by what’s actually in your cupboard. Type pickle juice, Clamato or Skittles into CocktailBuilder along with your spirits, and it shows every recipe you can make with that combination.

The ones we’ll leave to you

Our database also has a back room. The Bluecheese Martini, vodka and dry vermouth with crumbled blue cheese, makes sense to anyone who orders blue-cheese-stuffed olives in their martini. The Angela’s Cabin blends vodka, milk and creamy peanut butter, which lands closer to dessert than to a dare. The Chunky Monkey puts cottage cheese in with chocolate syrup and Kahlua, and we can’t think of a good reason to try it.

Then there’s a two-ingredient drink in our files made of tequila and mayonnaise. We have read it several times. We have not made it, and we have no plans to.

Last modified on October 25, 2026