This mintade is a refreshing drink made from fresh squeezed orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime juices with fresh mint leaves. Great for a spring brunch or your next cookout.
- Prep Time:
20 mins - Cook Time:
0 mins - Total Time:
20 mins *
* Plus chilling time.
Even when it is sweltering hot outside, this drink feels like a cool breeze. And when you live in Texas and it’s summer, the more cool breezes, the better so be sure to also check out my recipe for watermelon mocktails and frozen mint lemonade as well.
The first time I tasted this was at one of my favorite lunch spots. They call it mintade. The name makes it sounds like a mint tea when it is really more of a fruit-juice-ade. The mint just adds a refreshing kick to the orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime juices. But calling it orange-grapefruit-lemon-lime-mintade would have been impractical. So, let’s go with calling it mintade.
I had been trying to figure out how to make this drink for awhile. I knew it had orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime juices (it says so right on their menu) and the mint is pretty obvious given the name.
However, I never really knew where to start as far as the ratio of juices went. No one juice stands out stronger than the others. As good luck would have it, I happened to be flipping through an old issue of Gourmet magazine last weekend and there it was – a recipe for mintade. It was even called mintade.
I changed the recipe just slightly, reducing the amount of grapefruit juice and water, in order to balance the other juice flavors better.
Tips for making mintade
- You’ll be squeezing a lot juice for this recipe so use an electric citrus juicer if you can. It will make the prep much faster. You will want the kind that has a spinning reamer that you hand-push a halved citrus fruit onto to squeeze out the juice. If an electric juicer isn’t feasible, Serious Eats has a good article with recommendations for manual citrus juicers and reamers.
- I have found more and more grocery stores offering fresh squeezed juices as well. This is a great option especially if you’re making a double or triple batch of mintade. Just make sure the juice is freshly squeezed.
Then get ready for summer.
Mintade
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 6 cups
- Category: Drink
- Method: Stirred
- Cuisine: American
Description
This mintade is a refreshing drink made from fresh squeezed orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime juices with fresh mint leaves.
Ingredients
- 2 cups cold water
- 2 cups fresh orange juice
- 3/4 cup fresh pink grapefruit juice
- 1/2 cup fresh lime juice
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves, torn
- 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, to taste
Instructions
- Mix. Stir together water, juices, mint, and sugar in a large pitcher until sugar is dissolved.
- Chill. Chill until cold, at least 1 hour.
- Serve. Adjust sugar to taste and serve over ice.
Notes
- If desired, you can remove the mint leaves with a slotted spoon before serving.
- Recipe adapted from Gourmet Magazine, June 2007.
Jacob says
FANTASTIC recipe!
I had a drink like this at this coffee shop, and I couldn’t believe how delicious it was.
So I found your recipe, and I’m completely replacing coffee in the morning with this.
It INSTANTLY rejuvenates you and makes you very alert. It actually doesn’t even need the sugar if you don’t have much of a sugartooth because the natural sugars in each fruit is more than enough.
But thank you for this. It’s delicious, and I’ll be making sure grapefruits, oranges, lemons, limes and mint are on my weekly purchase list.
Taming of the Spoon says
So glad you liked this. I love the idea of having this as a morning wake-up drink!