How to drink a hurricane cocktail

The flaw in many a good hurricane recipe appears at the end of the directions with the suggestion: “Serve with a straw.”

Follow this directive at your own risk. Like the weather event that gives it its name, a hurricane is a powerful force of nature that must be respected and feared, but sometimes, if you get just a little of it, sipped slowly, it can be just the thing you needed.

After a dry spell that sucked the life out of everything but the weeds in my yard, reports of a tropical storm visiting for Labor Day weekend filled me with quiet anticipation. As forecasts became more pitched, I headed for the grocery store to get a few things and wound up dropping $200 on canned goods, batteries and bread. And when the rain was falling slow and steady on Friday afternoon, I drove instinctively to the ABC store for rum.

Legend holds that the good people of that New Orleans institution Pat O’Brien’s invented the hurricane in the mid-1940s when liquor salesmen had a surfeit of rum, which was unpopular at the time, but little bourbon and scotch. Their concoction was a hit and helped build the bar’s international reputation.

My affinity for the drink began long before I ever sipped one on a clear night at Pat O’Brien’s. I first made a batch when I was a young reporter living in Fayetteville and had spent the day watching other editors and reporters prepare to cover a Category 1 storm as it brushed the coast. I had been sent home, but the energy of the newsroom mobilizing to meet the threat of disaster had filled me with a powerful feeling of defiance.

As other reporters arrived at my house and we hoisted our potent rum drinks toward the rainy sky, I felt a little like Lt. Dan riding out the storm, perched atop the mast of Forrest Gump’s shrimp boat. Later that summer I was on the reporting team that documented Hurricane Fran’s landfall for the paper, piloting my wobbling Toyota Celica through a rain-lashed darkness of one of the scariest nights of my life, my defiance diminished greatly.

So far, I’ve been one of the lucky ones, never suffering the worst of a hurricane’s wrath, but always able to simply sweep away the debris at the storm’s end. Those mornings after a hurricane now occur as powerful affirmations, that even though the winds will rage and the waters will rise, at the end of the storm we emerge. It’s a moment of rebirth, a slate wiped clean, with our first task to clean up the mess and plot a course.

Recipes for hurricanes vary widely, but most call for equal amounts of dark rum and light rum, fruit juices and superfine sugar. I like Emeril Lagasse’s take, which calls for 12 ounces each of light rum and dark rum, 10 ounces each of grenadine, orange juice and lime juice. He calls for 3 tablespoon of sugar.

I use Meyer’s and Barcadi pineapple rum because it adds a fun, beachy scent and a little extra flavor just in case you were too lazy to hand squeeze all the lime juice you needed.

Use as much or as little superfine sugar as you like, depending on your sweet tooth. A good hurricane should be sweet and tart but not too much of either.

The key, I think, is the grenadine. It’s the one flavor that rules the others, so don’t skimp, get a decent bottle with some integrity, not just a vat of cheap red dye.

This recipe makes plenty to share. Serve over ice in tall glasses. Garnish with orange or pineapple slices. But do not drink with a straw.

This story was originally published September 7, 2016 at 11:03 AM with the headline "How to drink a hurricane cocktail."