Cuban · Drinks

Classic Mojito

White rum, lime, sugar, soda and a great deal of mint, pressed rather than pulverised. Bruise the mint too hard and you get bitter chlorophyll instead of aroma.

5 min total Serves 1 serving Easy
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Classic Mojito

Photograph credit: Cocktail Mojito by varshesh (Unsplash) · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

What to Put on the Table With Classic Mojito

  • Serve with Cuban sandwiches, ceviche or grilled prawns
  • A perfect hot-afternoon drink
  • Follow with strong coffee

Making Classic Mojito, Step by Step

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  1. Put the mint leaves and sugar in the base of a tall glass.

  2. Press the mint gently against the sugar with a muddler five or six times — just enough to release the aroma. Do not grind or tear the leaves.

  3. Add the lime juice and stir until the sugar has dissolved completely.

  4. Add the rum and stir once more.

  5. Fill the glass with crushed ice, right to the top.

  6. Top with chilled soda water and stir gently from the bottom to lift the mint through the drink.

  7. Slap a mint sprig between your palms to release its aroma and tuck it in beside a lime wedge. Serve with a straw.

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A Few Notes

Press, do not muddle to pieces. Blackened, shredded mint makes a bitter mojito.

Crushed ice, not cubes. It dilutes at the right rate and keeps the drink properly cold.

Use a decent aged-lite Cuban-style rum; the flavour is not hidden here.

Changing the Recipe

  • Lemon is the everyday swap for lime in this kind of dish — the acidity plays the same role even though the flavour is not identical.

Keeping What's Left

Mix to order. Sugar syrup keeps 1 month refrigerated. Never batch a mojito with the soda in.

Nutrition per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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Compiled by Turab

Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.

First published ; last changed .