Simple 2-Ingredient Mixers for Vodka Cocktails

After a long day of work, or a fantastic day of play, nothing caps off an evening like a homemade cocktail, enjoyed on your patio, couch, or even balcony with a view (it’s a lot cheaper than drinking in restaurants or bars, these days). But alcoholic beverage recipes have gotten somewhat absurdly complicated, with too many ingredients to count. Let’s get back to basics, with Roger Kamholz, who has a new cocktail recipe book entitled “Pour Together” coming out in late March, 2025. Food Republic spoke to him about vodka mixers that make for easy two-ingredient cocktails.

“Most vodkas have a largely neutral flavor by design, making the spirit a blank canvas enabling other ingredients in a cocktail to shine,” he said. “So you can experiment with the entire smoothie stand of fresh juices.” He told us that classic vodka cocktails, including those where the other ingredient is a juice, “have stood the test of time because they’re approachable, predictable[,] and unfussy.” And vodka itself stands the test of time — you have a good 10 to 20 years to finish off the same bottle with these mix-ins.

When you think of cocktails, your mind might fixate on sweet fruit juices, but vegetable juices can make for savory, complex, and even refreshing beverages (just look at how olive brine shines in extra dirty or filthy martinis, or how brunch-goers lap up a good spicy bloody mary). Break out your juicer and “Think beets … cucumbers, celery, carrots,” said Roger Kamholz. The fresh taste of the vegetable juice will pair beautifully with the clean flavor of vodka.

To get an even better punch of flavor with your vodka, he recommended cooking things down a bit: “To concentrate their flavor, try simmering fresh juices to cook off some of their water content, then let cool.” Kamholz then finished by telling us a good rule of thumb, “is 2 [ounces] of spirit to 4 [ounes] of … juice.”

Roger Kamholz also mentioned bison grass vodka as having a distinctive flavor that works well in a two-ingredient cocktail. A good example of this type of vodka is Żubrówka, made in Poland, whose origins are rooted back several centuries.

Noted for its vegetal flavor, Zubrowka also has strong notes of vanilla, cinnamon, and almond, which makes it the perfect base for a hard apple cider mixer. If you don’t want that much alcohol in one beverage, you could sub in non-alcoholic apple cider or apple juice instead.

It’s not just for drinking with breakfast — green tea can also add complexity to your vodka cocktails, thanks to its earthy, slightly astringent flavor. It’s particularly well-suited to vodka that is flavored with cucumber or botanicals.

In fact, if you really want to impress your guests, you can make your own cucumber vodka to pair with freshly brewed green tea (just steep cucumber pieces in the alcohol for up to two days). And if you have a little honey on hand, it’s not necessary, but it’s an easy upgrade (we know, we know — that makes three ingredients).

Both of these alcoholic beverages hail from Japan, though shochu is distilled and sake is brewed. But both, according to Roger Kamholz, play especially well off of deeper, creamy potato vodkas because those distilled liquors “have a subtle, savory quality you can play off of, too. Try mixing those with shochu and sake.”

Sake in particular is a great mixer for a savory vodka. The two ingredients together create a saketini, where the Japanese spirit takes the place of vermouth.

Shochu’s flavor profile depends on its base ingredient; it can be made from barley, rice, or even sweet potato. Some shochu’s natural earthiness can play very well with the savory potato vodkas, including in a shochu martini.

Finally, coffee lovers can begin to do their happy dance; coffee liqueur makes for a flavorful, espresso-forward cocktail when mixed with vodka (you might know this combination by the name Black Russian).

And you don’t have to stick to just plain old vodka, either; swap it out for one of the many flavors available, like cherry or raspberry, but especially vanilla, which tends to be sweet, smooth, and warm; different brands might have notes of caramel, dark chocolate, and even butterscotch, all of which match well with coffee liqueur.