I am a bartender in Los Angeles. Olive brine (juice) from the jar is not the best way to flavor your dirty martini. If you want the best you should use "Dirty Sue." Dirty Sue is twice filtered olive brine made from premium olives. If you add this to Hank's recipe, you will have a winner.
a few pointers from a seasoned bartender: most bottled olive brine has a strange artificial taste. i recommend using straight olive juice from a jar of quality olives. the difference between a top shelf vodka or gin and a low end is enormous when drinking a martini. save the cheap stuff for mixed drinks! start with a chilled martini glass, pepto it with vermouth, pour out excess, and mix your liquor and olive juice in a cocktail shaker of ice until ice forms on the outside. strain, garnish, and enjoy. the perfect martin!
YUM! Olive lovers will adore this, others may not. I use 3 Spanish Queen Olives. When you order this in a bar, be sure to specify level of dirtiness you prefer: Very dirty, dirty, slightly dirty. Some bartenders have a heavy hand with the brine and it can ruin what should be a fantstic cocktail! Salud!!
Wow! Hank, one of the reasons I like Vodka over gin is the taste aspect. I love olives and the sourness of the brine is great even with gin. I use blue cheese stuffed olives for special dryness. Hard for me to slowly sip this one.
No offense to the recipe. I do not like Vermouth. I like mine on the rocks. I freeze my glass, add the ice. I use Tito's vodka which is extremely smooth. Squeeze fresh lemon and Dirty Sue's olive juice, just a dash. I then add stuffed blue cheese olives. Stir it up and enjoy! That is my favorite Martini on the rocks.
The ONLY way that I can truly enjoy this classic is with Ketel One vodka, no vermouth, blue-cheese stuffed olives and extra olive juice. I like mine FILTHY!!
I heard someone on TV talking about this martini and they couldnt say enough good things about the "Dirty Martini". When I found this recipe its the greatest.
I'd never had a "dirty" martini until this past week and really enjoyed it..so much so, I went looking for this recipe on-line and this is great! To the "seasoned bartender" who gave the advice about coating the glass with the vermouth and discarding excess -- thank you!! While the vermouth does lend a definite layer of flavour,I have had other martinis where the vermouth was just too overpowering (and am actually never sure what a "dash" constitutes in ANY recipe!) Wonderful tip! As for the olive brine debate, I think if you use the brine from olives you enjoy for yourself and are pleased to set out for company on a tray -- that's perfectly fine -- it's all about personal tastebuds, right? The described portion was a bit much for me so I halved it -- but this will definitely become a regular before-Sunday-night-dinner-drink (as I relax in-between cooking and serving Sunday night dinner! LOL)
I'm drinking one right now, and it's awesome! Word of caution, the olive juice takes some of the bite out of the gin, making this go down very easy!
