Hot Buttered Rum
Made popular among the snow skiing jet-setters of the '60s, Hot Buttered Rum has been around since the colonial period.
It took a snowy day for me to learn how to make a hot buttered rum. It's really very simple, but requires a little patience, mostly to allow time for the butter to come to room temperature. If you're in a hurry, then I suppose a zap or two in the microwave would do the trick, but you want the butter soft, not liquid. Make sure also that you're using a premium dark rum, like Pyrat XO Reserve or Myers's Dark.
Rum is often thought of as having come from the Caribbean, but the true origins of the distilled spirit from sugarcane molasses isn't really known. A discovered Swedish war ship that sunk in 1628 carried a tin container of rum. Marco Polo recorded having a rum-like wine made from sugarcane in the 14th century in what is now modern day Iraq, and even a drink produced from fermented sugarcane juice is recorded in ancient Sanskrit texts.
Hot buttered rum originated in the American colonial period but became particularly popular among the snow skiing jet-setters of the 1960s. Admittedly, there is something about sipping a hot buttered rum near a roaring fireplace with snow on the ground that makes the beverage magical, especially delicious and even medicinal.
Hot Buttered Rum
Ingredients
- 1 cup softened unsalted butter (two sticks)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 tsp premium vanilla extract
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp ground allspice
- 2 tbsp Hot Buttered Rum Mix
- 2 oz premium dark rum (like Pyrat XO or Myer's Dark)
- 6 - 8 oz boiling hot water
- 1 whole cinnamon stick
Instructions
- Mix the butter, vanilla extract and the honey together until well blended. This will loosen the butter and make it easier to incorporate the remaining dry ingredients.
- Add the brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. Mix well until you have a homogeneous blend without any variations in color.
- Place this in a container with a tight fitting lid, and it will keep refrigerated for months.
- Bring water to boil in a tea kettle or saucepan; remove from the heat and allow to sit for a minute.
- Put the Hot Butter Rum mix in a coffee mug.
- Add the hot water to the mug and stir to mix.
- Measure the rum into the mug and stir again.
- Garnish with the cinnamon stick and serve.
Notes
- Water boils at 212°F, but alcohol vaporizes at 173°F, so the purpose of letting the water sit after coming to a boil is for it to cool slightly, keeping the rum from vaporizing too quickly. This is also why you add the rum to the coffee mug last.
