How to Make Homemade Fennel Blossom Liqueur

In this episode, Chef Andrew Lanier creates a simple fennel blossom liqueur. Wonderfully aromatic, homemade fennel liqueur is easy to make and a less complex substitute for absinthe. A squeeze from a fat lemon garnish adds a bit of complexity and balance to a refreshing libation.

Welcome back Inside the Kitchen Door. Today we'll be making some fennel blossom liqueur. I have this really wonderful fennel blossom just picked from the garden out in Medrona, close to the restaurant here. I'm going to be stuffing this into this bottle here, filling it up with a neutral spirit. We're giving a nice clean spirit like an Absolute Vodka, something in the mid price point. Good quality. And it’s not going to introduced too much other flavor into your liqueur. Very simple technique, just stuffing the bottle with the blossoms. Again, these blossoms, really, really rich. Sweet fragrant, floral accent to them. Add a little sugar to the bottle. Probably about a half cup in total. I don’t want it too sweet, but just enough to where it’s actually going to carry the flavor of the fennel. Now, if you're just going to use straight vodka without using any sugar, the flavor is going to be pretty flat. The sugar, like when you make a simple syrup, helps to sustain and carry through all the flavors in the fennel. As opposed to just one or two flat nose, then the vodka will pick out itself. So little more sugar there. Another important note to think of, when you're infusing liqueurs, you want to be using an all glass bottle. If you use a plastic container, that’s going to pick up a lot of flavors. Transfers, flavors of what might have in there before as well. And also it’s not very good for storage. So for example, if all of our juices that we use in the restaurant, we use strictly glass bottles to store them in and pour from. You really want to pack this fennel in here. Again, the more you get in, the more the flavor. So even though this particular bottle will hold about 5th and a half of alcohol. We’re probably getting it about three quarters of the bottle worth of liqueur out of it in the end. Because of how much of this fennel blossom we're stuffing into it. Pack it in real tight. At this point, we’ll add our absolute vodka. Okay, I'm going to cap this off and bring it over to our immersion circulator. That’s going to infuse it over the process of about an hour. It’s going to very gently heat it at a temperature below which alcohol boils. Again, I'm just stirring this like so to dissolve the sugar in it. Make sure everything is incorporated. So bring it over to the circulator here. Very simply drop it in. and what's that going to do is scalp it to a steep like a tea for example. Now, if I'm just going just let that sit for a week or two weeks to infuse, it’s really going to break down that fennel. It’s going to start tasting vegetal, kind of like grass clippings. And this is just going to steep it really quick. We’ll strain it out and then it will be ready to use in the store for about the next month or so. So, we've pulled out fennel liqueur from the water bath. Spend about an hour and half in there. It’s ready to go. I'm going to open this up and just drain it into another bottle. Important that you drain it, the same day as you infuse it. So that you can store it in the refrigerator for future use. Last for a month or two before it starts to break down. I'm just getting this really wonderful fresh fennel aroma coming at me as I drain this bottle. You see it has a very similar color to an absinthe. Got that nice vibrant yellow tinge to it. And the way we serve this in the restaurant is just like a pair of tiff, we just be pouring it over ice, giving little stir. Little illusion the same way as an absinthe does being that it has all the essential oils in the fennel blossoms in there. I just like to do a little zest of lemon on the top and serve it as is. Actually this is a bourbon glass. We actually like using them for liqueurs, et cetera. It’s kind of a versatile glass, it’s a nice and sexy way to serve it. So you can see that immediately, just start to cloud up in the same way that an absinthe would. Let me just give this quick little stir. And being as this is vodka base and not a higher proof, we don’t really need to dilute it as much as we would if we were actually serving an absinthe. I like to do a little zested lemon up at the top. Around on the glass. And that will be that. Let's give this a quick taste here. It’s wonderful. Fantastic. That’s our fresh fennel liqueur technique you could probably use in your bar as well.