Shaken, stirred, dry, or dirty; a classic martini is one of those drinks that looks a little bit different for everyone. But if anyone were to convert martini making into an exact science, it would be Alton Brown. Brown, a Food Network stalwart with nearly 20 years of television hosting under his belt, is known for dancing the fine line between culinary arts and scientific know-how. So it’s no surprise that Brown has an incredibly specific amount of olives in mind when making a gin martini. His perfect number? Three.
In an interview with Food Network, Brown detailed his surgically precise martini needs, with olives being the most crucial piece of the whole cocktail calculation. According to Brown, the three olives complement his perfect martini, which is made with 60 milliliters of ice-cold gin, 20 milliliters of vermouth, and 10 milliliters of olive brine. This 3-2-1 ratio makes for a gin martini that’s “a little bit dirty” and exactly how Brown prefers it. In order to make sure you always have gin at the ideal temperature, Brown recommends keeping a bottle in the freezer. If you’re at a loss about which kind of gin to keep on hand for all your martini-making needs, check out our 13 tips for selecting the right kind of gin for your martini.
How to recreate Alton Brown’s ideal martini
We’ve already gone over the bird’s-eye-view ingredient list that goes into Alton Brown’s scientifically perfected gin martini, but Brown also has his particulars when it comes to actually mixing the drink. In place of using a traditional tumbler to shake the cocktail, brown opts for a pitcher. He fills the pitcher with ice and then adds a splash of gin to coat the ice. After a quick swirl, Brown dumps out the extra gin and then puts the pitcher (which still has the ice in it) in the freezer for a bit. This way, you can lower the melting point of the ice, which in turn gives you that perfectly chilled martini, without worrying about it getting too watered down in the mixing process.
Brown then adds his 3-2-1 ratio of freezer-cold gin, vermouth, and olive brine before — controversially — giving the pitcher a shake (007-style) as opposed to a stir. After shaking up all the ingredients, Brown then resumes the traditional martini-making steps and strains the cocktail into a glass. If you’d like to be as particular as Brown is when making your next gin martini, we recommend you insist on using a V-shaped martini glass which was literally invented to make gin shine (if you need to stock up, this style of martini glasses are widely available on Amazon).
