As a budding bar manager who detested muddling, I tried everything under the sun or at least as much as my feeble brain could muster–infusing the mint into the tequila, pureeing mint with simple syrup, etc. All the techniques I used produced a great result…For a day or so, and then everything went brown. Yeah. So I spoke to the great and powerful Chef Fox, asked him how to make mint syrup without it turning brown. He recommended blanching, and here we are.

Caution: This will be the most amount of equipment you will ever need to use for the least amount of actual work.

Instead of the annoying term “mise en place,” in my head I like to think of the food ingredients as software and the kitchen gear as hardware. I don’t know, for some reason “mise en place” just grates on my jangled nerves.

Here’s everything you’ll need:

Software:

Two quarts of picked mint neither loosely or tightly packed

1000 grams of simple syrup (500 grams sugar, 500 grams water)

Salt for the water

Ice

Hardware:

Four quart pot

Large plate

Half hotel pan

Blanching basket

Sifting tool

Vitamix blender or equivilant

Two 18 inch swaths of cheesecloth

A chinois

A four quart measuring cup or pitcher

Told you it’s a lot.

You’ll need to pick your mint and make your simple syrup ahead of time. It’s better if the syrup is cold from the night before, unless you want brown syrup. Do I need to mention you should use the best mint possible? No rotten, slimy shit. Also, mint is delicate, resist the urge to pinch or overly fondle the mint leaves.

If it takes you longer than ten minutes to pick the mint and make the syrup, just give up now. You’ll never make it all the way through. Just accept muddling.

Get everything together. Put ice in the half hotel pan and add water so it becomes loose enough to put your blanching basket in. The reason you use a basket in the first place is so you’re not picking ice chunks out of your mint when it’s done. Trust me, it’s annoying.

It’ll look like this.

And here’s everything all lined up and ready to go. Ignore the servers in the background. See how the basket is right next to the pot? That’s no mistake.

When you’re ready to go, add a good amount of salt to the water in the pot. There’s discussion as to whether this is even necessary anymore, it is, as the salt seasons the mint a bit. The plate goes on the top of the pot to make it boil faster.

Get a rolling boil going. No half ass simmers.

Each quart of mint goes in for 35 seconds. Use the voice activation of Siri on your phone, hold the side button down and say “Set timer, 35 seconds.”

Use the sifter to remove the mint and when it goes into the watery section of the basket, sans ice, move it around a bit to make sure it all gets cold. This is an important detail, as believe it or not, the mint can stay hot in there.

Once it’s all blanched and cooled down, remove. Duh. I use the plate from the top of the pot as a spot to place the basket for a moment to let it drain out a little more while I do some initial cleaning up of all this crap. Dumping the hot water out, getting rid of the ice.

Shake as much water as you can out of the mint but whatever you do, do not wring the mint with your hands. Rally against stupidity.

Once you’re done, it all goes in the blender pitcher.

Looks nice right? Now destroy! Puree on the highest setting for a couple of minutes.

Wheeeeeee!

At the end it should be very, very green, like so.

I let the pureed syrup sit for another five to ten minutes, then pour it into the cheeseclothed chinois.

Oooooooh! Aaaaaaah! Drip, drip. At the bottom you’ve got your delicious mint syrup.

Muddling? Muddling? We don’t need no stinking muddling.

This also work with any other delicate type herb like basil, shiso, and opal basil. For those herbs you’ll need less, just one loosely packed quart. I don’t see the need for any woody herb syrup like rosemary or sage, but I’ve also never tried.