I have to be honest and say right up front, a hot toddy isn't usually the route we take when we get to feeling bad. We simply don't keep whiskey on hand but yesterday when my wife started sounding like Kermit the frog, I knew we needed to nip this one in the bud. I researched many recipes and came up with my own that made sense to me. I have a small working knowledge of the benefits of the ingredients and decided to actually heat up the honey and juice instead of just dumping honey and juice into hot tea. This will produce a very steamy drink that will steam your congestion away and sooth your sore throat as it slides down! When mamma goes down things really slow to a crawl so I went to the store and gathered up the ingredients. This makes enough drink for two.
Ingredients:
- One blood orange (any orange will do I just wanted to mix it up a bit)
- One lemon
- One lime (optional I love the taste of lime and its good for you)
- Two tea bags of Black tea (I prefer chai tea because it has all kinds of spices)
- One half cup Honey
- 4 oz Whiskey (I got Jim Bean Fire because of the cinnamon).
Tools:
- cutting board
- knife
- sauce pan
- strainer
- stirring utensil
- While the tea is getting happy in the thermos, cut the orange, lemon, and lime in wedges. Set two wedges of lemon and two wedges of lime aside to put in tea later.
- Squeeze as much juice as you can into the sauce pan. Isn't that a beautiful color from that blood orange? It's totally okay if you get some pulp in there, we will be straining it all out later.
- Start a low heat under the citrus juice. You're going to want to warm this juice up a little before you put the honey in but do not boil it. I added a splash of water because the blood orange didn't really have much juice.
- Once the citrus mixture is warm, add the honey . Continually stir until honey is melted and well incorporated into the juice.
- When honey and the juice are well mixed, pour the citrus honey mixture through a strainer into the tea that's been steeping in the thermos (or whatever you have the tea steeping in).
- add whiskey
- Stir the mixture well.
- Once the tea is mixed well with the honey and citrus, pour into individual cups and drop a slice of lemon and lime in each cup.
- Find a cozy spot in front of the fireplace and let the hot tea relax and sooth you!
Within minutes my wife was talking normal and said she felt much better! I was going to add in some essential oils but she has a sensitivity to some oils so I didn't want to take the chance. If you did add EO's, I would probably recommend Thieves, peppermint, or oregano.
She was a little apprehensive at first because of the alcohol. She didn't want to feel loopy or get a buzz as she's also sensitive to alcohol. Rest assured you will not get a buzz from this little bit of alcohol but you will definitely feel its affects because you're drinking it warm which gets it into your system faster. Having experienced the effectiveness of this hot drink, this will definitely be something we keep around!
I pray you have a happy and healthy winter!!!
Thank you for stopping by!
