Margarita Olé! Festive Glass Rimming for Cinco de Mayo

Want to give your Margaritas a special flare for your Cinco de Mayo party this year?  This special glass rimming is just the thing you need to make your Margaritas memorable (well, some good tequila wouldn’t hurt either).  You will surprise and delight your guests when you rim your glasses in the colors of the Mexican flag: red, white, and green using this fairly simple technique. 

My wife is a great shopper, and she will often pick up rimming salts or sugars when she sees them on sale during her extensive shopping expeditions throughout the Salt Lake City area.  The result is that I have such a large collection that it can be hard to remember just what I have stuck away in the pantry (no room in the bar).  Last year I was looking at my white, green, and orange rimming salts when I realized that I almost had a match for the colors in the Mexican flag.  Hey, I thought, I can use all three at once to improve the presentation of my Margaritas.

There’s no need to buy three colors of rimming salt (I couldn’t find red salt, anyway); you can make your own.  Just take some regular white rimming salt (or other coarse salt) and put it in a small plastic container that has a lid.  Add a few drops of food coloring, put on the lid, and shake briskly.  Open the container and check the contents.  If there are clumps, you put in too much food coloring, add a little more salt and shake again.  If the color is too light, add another drop of food coloring and shake again.  Do this for any colors you need.

Once the colored salts are ready, take a rimming tray that’s large enough to fit your Margarita glasses (or you can use a saucer) and fill one third with green salt.  Moving clockwise, fill the next third with white salt and fill the final third with the red.  You don’t have to measure with geometric precision, just take a good guess and try not to mix the colors.  I usually spoon the salt in toward the middle of each third and carefully nudge it toward the boundaries.  I normally leave the salts in my rimming tray (covered with plastic wrap) between Margarita sessions and refill the salts as needed.

The best technique for actually rimming the glass is to rub a slice of lime around the rim to get it good and sticky.  Try to get more on the outside of the rim than on the inside so you don’t get too much salt in your Margarita.  Dip the glass into the salt, being careful not to twist it, and set it upright on your bar.  If any salt dislodges and falls into the glass, invert the glass to dump it out.  Garnish the glass with a lime wheel between the green and red salts, and your glass is ready for the Margarita. Have a great party.  Olé!