How to Make a Strawberry Gimlet
This Strawberry Gimlet is a slightly sweet, refreshing cocktail made with gin, strawberry simple syrup, and fresh-squeezed lime juice. It’s a classic cocktail variation made for sipping alongside a cheese or charcuterie plate, great friends, and good conversation.
Read on for information about gimlets and detailed tips and tricks how to make them. Or just grab your cocktail shaker, hit that Jump to Recipe button, and let’s make a strawberry gin gimlet!
Ingredients
The classic gimlet was a very sweet drink made with lime cordial. Over the years, cocktails became less sweet as tastes changed. The gimlet is now considered one of the classic sour cocktails like the margarita or daiquiri.
This strawberry gin gimlet recipe makes a cocktail on the sweeter side. If you prefer dry cocktails, use the classic sour formula of 2 ounces of gin and three-quarter ounces of both strawberry simple syrup and lime juice.
- Gin – use any type of gin in this strawberry gimlet recipe
- Strawberries – fresh or frozen will both work perfectly
- Lime juice – fresh squeezed, always!
Got strawberries? Check out recipes for a strawberry apple pie, unsweetened strawberry applesauce, strawberry pop tarts, or dried strawberry chips.
Please see the recipe card below for complete information on ingredients and quantities.
Variations and substitutions
If a strawberry syrup gin cocktail isn’t your thing, the gimlet is highly adaptable:
- Use rum and you’ve got a strawberry daiquiri. Or make a tequila gimlet.
- Use lemon juice and soda water and serve over ice, and it’s a strawberry Tom Collins.
- If you like strawberry and basil together, muddle basil leaves for a strawberry basil gimlet.
- Change it up with a syrup made from a different summer berry like this blackberry syrup or go with lavender blossoms for a lavender gimlet.
- Make a cranberry gimlet for the holidays.
- Make a strawberry lemon drop martini.
Recipe tips and tricks
Hulling strawberries
The simplest way to hull a fresh strawberry is shown in the photos below. First grasp the leaves together and pull them off (Panels #1 and #2). Then, use a paring knife, always cutting away from yourself, to remove the stem.
How to make strawberry simple syrup
Simple syrups are really, well, simple to make. Just start with equal amounts of sugar and water in a pot and bring them together over low heat.
Cool and strain with a fine sieve for your strawberry syrup cocktail or mocktail. Those strawberries have tiny seeds!
Cocktail step by step
Combine all of the ingredients for the strawberry gimlet in a cocktail shaker with a cup of ice and shake for 10 to 20 seconds. You can serve a gimlet with ice or straight up.
Tip from the wise quacker: The general teaching is that cocktails with citrus juices should be shaken, but cocktails with only alcohols should be stirred.
Make it a mocktail
To make a strawberry limeade mocktail, combine the strawberry simple syrup, lime juice, and ice in your shaker, shake and strain into a tall glass filled with ice. Top with club soda or tonic water.
Recipe FAQs
No, go ahead and shake to whatever song you like. But there a few things you shouldn’t do.
Store homemade simple syrups in the refrigerator for a week or two. Some people say you can freeze simple syrups, but this works only if you have a deep freezer.
Add strawberries to your strawberry cocktail, serve them over peanut butter waffles, with yogurt and homemade granola, or just eat them with a spoon!
Related cocktail recipes
Check out other Ugly Duckling Bakery gin cocktails like:
Love cocktails and want to explore more? Read all about classic cocktails and bartender basics, check out my list of essential bar tools for cocktails at home, and join this year’s 52 weeks of cocktails challenge!
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Recipe
Strawberry Gimlet
Equipment
- Cocktail shaker
Ingredients
Strawberry simple syrup
- 1 cup strawberries, fresh or frozen If fresh, stemmed, hulled, and roughly chopped.
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup water
Strawberry gimlet
- 2 ounce gin
- 1 ounce strawberry simple syrup
- ½ ounce lime juice
- strawberry or lime wheel
Instructions
Strawberry simple syrup
- Combine the chopped strawberries, sugar, and water in a small sauce pan and bring to a slow barely bubbling simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let cool.1 cup strawberries, fresh or frozen, ½ cup granulated sugar, ½ cup water
- Strain the strawberry syrup into a clean measuring cup or jar using the finest strainer you have.
Strawberry gimlet
- Combine about a half cup of ice with the gin, simple syrup, and lime juice into a cocktail shaker and shake for 10 to 20 seconds until chilled. Double strain the gimlet into a martini glass or a rocks glass with a large ice cube and garnish with half of a strawberry.2 ounce gin, 1 ounce strawberry simple syrup, ½ ounce lime juice, strawberry or lime wheel
Notes
- This strawberry gimlet recipe makes a sweet cocktail. If you aren’t partial to sweet, use the classic sour formula of 2 ounces of gin and three-quarter ounces of both strawberry syrup and lime juice.
- Please see the main post for tips in hulling fresh strawberries.
- Straining the strawberry simple syrup and then double straining the gimlet keeps all those pesky strawberry seeds from getting in your teeth!
- The gimlet is a shaken cocktail. The classic teaching is that cocktails with fruit juices should be shaken, and cocktails with only liquors should be stirred with ice.
- Feel free to serve this strawberry gimlet over ice or neat.
Nutrition
Bored with the recipes you’ve been cooking and baking lately? Get inspiration here:
You are inspiring me to make some flavored simple syrups.
You should! The strawberry syrup was particularly divine.