I say it every year when Mardi Gras season begins: Laissez les bon temps rouler! For any N'Awlins native like myself, Mardi Gras means beads, parades, red beans and rice, festively frosted king cakes, and hurricanes. Not the destructive kind born of Mother Nature. But the classic hurricane drink developed at the legendary Bourbon Street bar, Pat O'Brien's!
The Original Recipe
This classic Crescent City cocktail goes way back to the drinking days immediately following the repeal of Prohibition.
A little speakeasy on Bourbon Street began doing legitimate business, and needed a drink to serve as a vehicle for a surplus of rum.
As told by Pat O'Brien himself, whiskey and bourbon were in short supply, but the rum was flowing like the Mississippi River.
So as a bar owner what do you do with cases and cases of the island specialty? Pour it into a huge hurricane (lamp) glass, add some gin, triple sec and amaretto for fun, and call it a night.
The Ingredients
- vodka
- gin
- rum
- more rum
- triple sec
- amaretto
- grenadine
- pineapple juice
- grapefruit juice
Thoughts on Passion Fruit Juice
I found the recipe here on Pat O'Brien's website years ago - and it did not call for passion fruit juice. I have no idea when this particularly uncommon ingredient snuck into the mix.
But I can't imagine at the end of prohibition - with The Great Depression just ending - that NOLA bartenders had access to (and could afford) an exotic South American juice.
So I leave it out. By all means if you can find it, and like it, pour it in.
Perhaps someone within the Pat O'Brien's network who has firsthand knowledge will weigh in on this one day. For now, I call passion fruit juice an imposter to an authentic, original recipe.
The Experience
These days Pat O'Brien's while legendary, is more or less uninspiring to locals.
But as you sit on the picturesque patio listening to the jazz and sipping your hurricane drink from two long straws, it's easy to imagine a montage of eight decades worth of revelry at the piano lounge turned tourist magnet.
And while the clothing and atmosphere may blur as the generations come, sip and fade into their future counterparts, the notorious Hurricane drink remains solely in focus.
That is until you order a second round. As I said, it's got a lot of rum.
The Original Pat O'Brien's Hurricane
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: None
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 1 Hurricane Drink 1x
- Category: Drinks
- Method: Mixology
- Cuisine: American
Description
Bottom's up! But take it slow. This classic New Orlean's (N'Awlins) cocktail calls for all the big cocktail players, disguised in splashes of grenadine and fruit juice.
Ingredients
- 1 ounce vodka
- 1 ounce gin
- 1 ounce light rum
- ½ oz Bacardi® 151 rum
- 1 ounce amaretto almond liqueur
- 1 ounce triple sec
- 1½ teaspoons grenadine
- Grapefruit juice
- Pineapple juice
Equipment
- Long straws (you need a tall glass for this one!)
- 1 orange, sliced into half moons, for garnish
- Maraschino cherries, for garnish
Instructions
- Fill as large a glass as you have three-fourths full of ice.
- Pour in liquors first, then add equal parts of each fruit juice until the glass is full.
- Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.
- And for the real Pat O'Brien's experience, sip through TWO straws!
Notes
1 liquid ounce equals 1 standard jigger or 2 tablespoons.
Keywords: pat o'brien hurricane recipe, hurricane cocktail, how to make a hurricane, hurricane drink
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Christina
What a fun variation! Thanks for sharing the idea.
John
Great recipe. I will give it a try using the amber rum from the Old New Orleans Rum Distillery. Thanks!
Christina
Thanks for sharing your fun story, Margaret! This recipe is from Pat O'Briens many years back and was titled "original", but as most of history goes, we'll probably never know the real story! 🙂
Margaret Welch
Interesting twist on the hurricane and looks to be a pretty good cocktail.
Looking to use up surplus rum the Original contained Passion fruit, lime juice and rum- just three ingredients. The point was to create a cocktail to use up the rum, not to include other liquors or the myriad of other ingredients listed. If you dissect the list of items used in your cocktail amaretto, an Italian Liquor and pineapple juice are much more "exotic".
Passion fruit however, grows wild in my field in here in SC, and a neighbor in the UK, had it growing up a trellis on her house. Its not quite as exotic as you think growing well in Zones 10-7, and much more available than pineapple would have been. Cocktails back then also were much more simplistic, however, that doesn't say that your particular recipe isn't delicious and more intriguing. The recipe for the Hurricane has been "tweaked" over the years by their own admission and of course they now sell a premix of chemicals and artificial flavours to mimic the drink they are famous for. For now, I will head out to the field, grab some fresh passion fruits, toss them in the steam juicer and make mine really fresh and truly original.
★★★★