The Best Margarita Rims Can Perfectly Match Any Delicious Cocktail Flavor. Photo: BruceTigerWilliams/Shutterstock

Looking to take your margarita rim to the next delicious level? We have a few off-kilter recommendations.

At countless bars and in countless cocktail recipes, you’ll find margaritas adorned with the classic salt rim. It’s a tried and true combo for good reason – salt can help mellow the bitter bite of tequila and lime, and it even stimulates your taste buds.

But sometimes you’re looking for something different. With hundreds of spicy, sweet, funky and savory margarita variations in circulation, salt rims aren’t necessarily always the best choice. Sometimes, you’re looking for something a little crazier.

Below, we present a handful of easy, home-friendly margarita rims. Some work in tandem with salt, others best by themselves. You can mix and match to see what fits your tastes best.

Tajin

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Arguably the most iconic tequila cocktail rim other than salt, tajin is an ultra-versatile fan-favorite spice mix.

If you’ve never tasted tajin before, expect a tangy combination of mild chili peppers, lime and salt. It’s delicious, and you’ll frequently see it dolloped on everything from fruits to popsicles to cocktails.

Tajin works as an easy substitute for salt in your basic margarita, or maybe you want to use it as a signature ingredient in a smoky & spicy mezcal cocktail. For best results, we’d highly recommend rimming your cocktail glass with a lime wedge before dunking it into tajin.

Ground Herbs

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All the talk of “vegetal” and “herbaceous” notes in tequila makes for a neat pairing with, well, vegetables and herbs!

Whether you’re going for a basil, a cilantro, or a thyme-flavored margarita, the possibilities are endless.

This is a variation you’ll want to try out in tandem with either salt or sugar. Making a flavored salt is easy enough; just grind up your herb of choice into a fine residue, and mix it with equal parts salt.

Spicy Peppers

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The internet is inundated with jalapeño margaritas of all varieties. A spicy pepper rim is a great way to make yours stand out.

There are two ways you can go about infusing your rim with the crunchy bite of tasty peppers. You could opt to zest a pepper (much like the ever-popular lime or lemon zest rim), then mix it with salt. Your rim will look like it was dunked face-first into a pepper patch, but be warned that it’ll pack a strong vegetal bite not for the faint of heart.

If you’re looking for a subdued alternative and have a little time on your hands, try muddling your pepper of choice into a pulp. If you work at it hard enough, you can strain your results through a fine mesh and be rewarded with a spicy peppery syrup of sorts. Use this to rim your margarita glass then dunk it in salt, tajin, herbs or more to your heart’s content.

Shredded Coconut

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Shredded coconut leans a little more specific than our previous recommendations, and won’t necessarily work on your run-of-the-mill margarita.

But it’s a fantastic, flaky choice nonetheless. For a coconut margarita, the highly unusual tequila piña colada, or even with just a coconut-flavored tequila, a shredded coconut rim is a sweet tasty treat.

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