Smokey Citrus Bloody Mary

Here is a little secret about me...I am cheap. I prefer to make dishes/drinks at home versus going to a restaurant, particularly if we will be having drinks with the meal.

On that note, Pat and I love a good Bloody Mary drink on a lazy Sunday morning  I will partner them with a nice little brunch. Problem is that I can't stand commercial Bloody Mary mix, so I went on a search for a homemade one. I found this recipe on Allrecipes and we loved it. I made it the day before just to give the flavors a time to meld. The nice thing about this mix is that even though it made a ton of mix, we were able to put it in serving size packages and freeze it.

I decided to partner this with a citrus vodka. It had a sweet yet smoky taste to it. We also tried a plain vodka version, and it was awesome too. What I liked about this recipe is that I seemed it could be easily adaptable for a Bloody Maria which has a tequila base. We even tried it straight with no alcohol and it was pretty dang tasty.

Garnish these as desired. I like the "meal in itself" component of these drinks and will go crazy with my garnishments. I have used green onions, celery stalks, green olives, large shrimp, chunks of cheese, chunks of summer sausage, etc. I am reminded of that photo where the Bloody Mary is garnished with a baby cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich and a buffalo wing.

So, here we go!:

Ingredients:

1 (46 fluid ounce) can HIGH QUALITY tomato juice

1/3 cup steak sauce

3 tablespoons hickory smoke-flavored

barbeque sauce

1 teaspoon ground celery seed

1 teaspoon garlic salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 pinch cayenne pepper, or to taste

Lemon wedges

Directions:

1)  Stir tomato juice, steak sauce, barbeque sauce, celery seed, garlic salt, cayenne paper and black pepper in a large pitcher. 

2) Serve in glasses over ice. Add 1.5 ounces vodka and top with 4 oz of mix.  

3) Garnish each serving as desired above.