There is a particular sound a slushie machine makes. A low, happy churn. Once it starts, the afternoon has decided what it is going to be, and nobody is leaving early.
A frozen margarita at home used to mean a blender, a bag of ice and a lot of noise. It doesn't any more.
It is mostly waiting
Pour the mix in. Add your tequila. Put the lid on and leave it alone.
That last part is the hard bit. People hover. They open the lid to check. They stir it with a spoon. Don't — every time you lift the lid you let the cold out and start again. Put it on before people arrive, walk away, and come back to something that looks like it came off a beach bar in Mexico.
Go easy on the tequila
This is the only rule worth remembering, and it is the one everybody breaks.
Alcohol doesn't want to freeze. A heavy pour and the machine will spin all night and hand you a cold soup at the end of it. Heartbreaking, and entirely avoidable. Be restrained at the start — you can always make the next bowl stronger, and nobody has ever complained that a frozen margarita was too easy to drink.
Cold in, cold out
Keep the mix in the fridge the night before. A machine filled with something already cold gets there much faster than one starting from room temperature on a hot day, and on a hot day you want every head start you can get.
The bit that matters
Salt the rim. Properly — a wedge of lime round the edge of the glass, then upside down into a saucer of good flaky salt. It takes four seconds and it is the difference between a drink and an occasion.
Then a wedge on the side, a short straw, and out into the sun.
Our frozen margarita slushie mix comes in a pouch with a tap, so it goes straight into the machine without a funnel, a jug, or a sticky bench. Fresh lime juice, organic agave and sea salt. Made in Byron Bay, where we have given this a great deal of personal research.