When a user let us know we were missing the Strawberry Daiquiri, we committed an evening and several pounds of fruit to finding the very best recipe for this oft-maligned classic. We wanted a true daiquiri, not a blended-up sugar-bomb, and at first we gravitated towards recipes that called for lots of berries, thinking that we’d need more in the shaker to compensate for not using the full mass of the berry as we would in a blended drink.
Ultimately, our theory didn’t pan out – recipes calling for more strawberries were uniformly worse than recipes that only called for one or two. More strawberries in the shaker meant more messy pulp getting in the way of the pour, and the flavor was so strawberry-forward that it flattened out the other flavors in the drink, obscuring the daiquiri it was meant to be.
The clear winner ended up being the simplest: a classic rum sour ratio, and one single berry (or two, if yours are on the small side). Muddling the berry with the syrup first extracts a strong, fragrant flavor, but still allows the daiquiri structure to shine through.
That said, you can still serve this as a blended drink! Add all the ingredients to a blender, toss in a few more berries, add a cupful of crushed ice, and blend to your desired texture. It won’t be as delicate and complex as the shaken version, but it’s more than acceptable on a hot day out by the pool.
