Cocktails with Blood orange juice
Blood orange juice is the juice of a pigmented sweet-orange variety, its flesh ranging from red to deep crimson.
Substitutes for Blood orange juice
Color is the whole reason it is named, and the pigment does not survive a jug. Flavor is easy to match; the look is not, so squeeze what you need and no more.
Often confused with
Blond orange juice
Blond orange is the same species without the pigment, and slightly more acidic. The drink loses the color and gains a little sharpness. In a drink whose point was the color, it changes everything and tastes almost the same.
Cara Cara orange
A pink-fleshed navel, sweeter and lower in acid, colored by lycopene and not anthocyanin: it does not deepen in the glass the way blood orange does.
Description
The red comes from anthocyanins, rare in citrus, and they only appear if the fruit ripened in the cold — which is why the season is short.
Storage
Fresh juice is a same-day ingredient and loses its color before it loses its flavor. Whole fruit keeps a week or two refrigerated. The redness varies enormously between varieties and even between fruits off one tree, so judge the batch and not the label.
