Blood Orange Whiskey Sour

I made it all the way through the 40 pound box of blood oranges my friend from Arizona sent on Monday and made a blood orange whiskey sour to celebrate. Given that the Portland metro area has been essentially shut down because of a major snow storm, working my way through a box of citrus made me so happy. I’m getting the spring twitches - the days are getting a little longer and when the sun does come out (which it does, even in the PNW), I suddenly want to go plant a garden. Now. Immediately. Right this minute. Yeah - it’s that bad. As an alternative, I’ll likely be stopping off at a really lovely plant nursery that’s close to where I work just to go in and smell some dirt. Seriously - it gets that bad for me in January.

So back to the citrus - the lovely orbs of blood oranges made my heart sing. I wasn’t about to let a single one go to waste, so the last thirty or so got juiced and frozen in ice cube trays. I figure I can thaw out what I need to make a few more recipes later this month. I also love using the cubes in drinks - much better than regular ice! I also used a bit of that juice to make my Blood Orange Whiskey Sour. I happened to have a few Meyer lemons left in the fridge, so used two of them to make the sour part of the blood orange whiskey sour more pronounced.

I’ve had a few people ask me what makes a blood orange different than a regular orange. Mostly, it’s the color in the interior of the orange. Some of the oranges are a blood red inside, and some have a tinge of orange on the peel. Taste wise, they are more intensely orange. If I could figure out how to grow dwarf citrus trees, these would definitely be on my list.