Want Better Texture With Your Non-Alcoholic Cocktails? Add Sushi Rice. 🍣

Stirring or shaking cocktails with uncooked sushi rice can add body while eliminating overly harsh or bitter flavors.

Making No-gronis at the former Columbia Room in Washington, D.C. Photo by Farrah Skeiky.

Sushi rice and cocktails go together surprisingly well, and I don’t mean as a pairing. I mean literally adding uncooked sushi rice to your cocktail when shaking or stirring. It turns out doing so can add texture to your cocktail and even remove some of the more harsh flavors.

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⚠️ Safety Note: Though the rice is milled and polished, it may still contain bacteria from soil. The greater risk seems to be from cooked rice that is improperly cooled, but there remains some risk even with high quality, uncooked rice. Please explore this technique with that consideration in mind. You can find more information here. ⚠️

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I first came across this technique in Punch Magazine in an article by Mary Anne Porto (Porto also recently wrote about another trick for NA cocktails, rum extract). In her article on adding sushi rice, Porto pointed out that this innovative technique for rounding out flavors and adding body is being used by bartenders in a range of drinks, most notably the Negroni.