Bloody Mary Garnishes

A perfect Bloody Mary is not complete without these delicious garnishes. Check out all my variations and choose your favorite.

Garnishing your Bloody Mary is almost as fun as drinking it! Garnishes for Bloody Mary’s are usually a celery stick and/or a skewer with some olives or pickles, perhaps a piece of salami. All of that is perfectly fine, but I love to build some themed Bloody Mary garnishes.

Below you’ll find themed Bloody Mary skewers that are not only fun, but practical too as they function as a mini snack stick ready to dip. I’ll be showing you how to make multiple kinds – shrimp fajita, caprese, and Caesar salad themed skewers. But first, I have some really great tips for making Bloody Mary garnishes that work well.

How To Build The Perfect Garnish

The trick to building the perfect Bloody Mary garnish is to use ingredients at the top and bottom of your skewer or toothpick that can act as an anchor. You need these to keep the other ingredients in place so they don’t spin or slide on the skewer.

Wooden skewers can be found in the grocery store in a variety of places, like with the barbeque items, spices, or even with the paper goods, and come in different lengths. Before building your skewers, double-check that the length of the skewer will fit the glass. It should be about four or five inches taller than your glass so that the ingredients on the skewer are above the tomato juice and rim of the glass. Trim as needed with a pair of scissors.

You’ll be building the garnishes backward, starting with the ingredient that appears at the top of the skewer so that when the skewer is ready, the blunt end is facing up. You don’t want to be stabbed while enjoying your cocktail.

With the pointed end of one of the wooden skewers, pierce the center of the first ingredient and push toward the blunt end of the skewer, leaving about ¼-inch of the skewer exposed. This first ingredient acts as one of the anchors for the rest of the ingredients and will help to keep everything from sliding up or down.

Continue to add ingredients according to the recipe, pushing each one up toward the blunt end (the top) of the skewer. Each of the ingredients should be touching each other, but not so tightly that they appear squished together. The last ingredient acts as the second anchor to help keep everything in place.

Flavors For Bloody Mary Garnishes

I decided I wanted to have multiple options for these cocktail skewers. I created three different skewers so you can make one, or all of them, or use this as inspiration to come up with your own versions.

Caprese Skewers: Use mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil leaves in a pattern to create this garnish. I use ciliegine mozzarella for these, which are the little balls about the size of cherry tomatoes. They are slightly smaller than the bocconcini mozzarella.

Caesar Salad Skewers: Like the classic salad, this skewer has anchovies, Romaine lettuce, croutons, plus a little Caesar dressing and Parmesan cheese. The trick to these is building the skewer with the first three ingredients, then dipping one side in the dressing and using that to get the Parmesan to stick.

Shrimp Fajita Skewers: For these, we toss cooked shrimp with fajita seasoning and put one on each skewer between green pepper and a cocktail onion, along with a bit of fresh cilantro. Yum!

Make your garnish skewers ahead of time and keep them covered in the refrigerator until ready to use, or create a Bloody Mary board where everyone can make their own. When you’re ready, mix up some delicious Bloody Mary’s using this amazing homemade Bloody Mary Mix, and then add your garnishes. So fun to have a snack built into your drink, isn’t it?

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