Bigly Whiskey Sour

I'm just gonna say it. The state of the Whiskey Sour in this country is BAD. It is in CRISIS. Most bars, most of them, the sad ones, they pull a green plastic bottle off the speed rail, squeeze a sad little jet of fake sour mix into a glass with cheap whiskey, and they call it a Whiskey Sour. It is not a Whiskey Sour. It is a chemical event. It is wet sadness in a glass. An insult to bourbon.

The real Whiskey Sour — the BIGLY Whiskey Sour — has three ingredients. Bourbon. Lemon. Sugar. And then a fourth thing, which the cowards won't tell you about, which is EGG WHITE. Egg white. Many people don't know this. They hear egg white, they panic, they call their mother. Don't panic. My grandmother taught me this, by the way — tough woman, ran a kitchen the size of a closet, made a Whiskey Sour that would knock the hat off a senator — and she said the egg white is what makes the foam, the foam is what makes the drink. Without the foam you have a sour-flavored shot. With the foam you have ART. You have a CLOUD on top of your drink. You have something to put a few drops of bitters on so it looks like a tiny galaxy.

And I'll tell you something else. The whiskey matters. Use a real bourbon. Not the cheap stuff. Not the eighty-dollar stuff either — there are chefs and bar consultants out there who want you to spend a hundred bucks on bourbon for a MIXED DRINK, a hundred bucks, for one cocktail, sad, sad people, if your bartender tells you otherwise find a new bartender — use a good honest bourbon, twenty-five bucks, Buffalo Trace, Old Forester, something with corn in it that knows what it's doing. The bourbon does the heavy lifting. The lemon and sugar are the band. The egg white is the lighting designer. Believe me.

That's the Whiskey Sour. That's the BIGLY Whiskey Sour. You make one of these for someone at the end of a long day and you will own them forever — they will text you in three years out of nowhere and say, 'Remember that drink.' They remember the drink. They always remember the drink. The drink is the memory. The foam is the magic. The bitters on top is the bow on the gift. Save me a piece.