Drinks to keep you cool as the world heats up

The news? It’s hot. In my neck of the woods (Los Angeles), we’ve been staring down heat advisories for weeks now, with temperatures reaching the triple digits in some neighborhoods.

And Southern California is no exception — all over the country (and the world) record-breaking heat is bearing down on people, sometimes with extreme consequences.

And given all the heavy weather-related news swirling around these past few weeks, I thought it might be helpful to write about something that could bring the temperature down a little — both metaphorically and literally.

So here it is: For months, I’ve been researching the drinks that people in hot places use to cool down.

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And while there are too many great ones to put in this newsletter – after all, the world is vast, and a lot of it is pretty toasty — I’m going to share five of my favorites that have been getting me through the warmer days in my air conditioner-free apartment.

• Limonana, aka Egyptian Mint Lemonade 🍋 I’ve rarely seen a lemonade that I didn’t want to get my hands on, but this one is next-level. The recipe I used, from two Egyptian American sisters, is simple, luxurious, and easy to make vegan (subbing coconut milk for whole). If you’re a fan of caipirinhas or mojitos, this drink is their tart, bittersweet, workday-friendly cousin.
• Fresco de Ensalada Salvadoreña 🍍Half drink, half fruit salad, this Salvadoran punch full of pineapple, Pink Ladies, marañon, and more proves you can have your drink and eat it, too. I used the recipe from Karla Tatiana Vasquez’s new Salvisoul Cookbook (with some substitutions — not everything is easy to get), but this one from Mrs. Mango is also quite good. (And the video is easy to follow even if you don’t speak Spanish.)
• Mango Lassi 🥭 Am I going to lie and tell you that I’ve made a mango lassi in my dingy blender that can barely turn ice cream into milkshake? No. I haven’t. What I have done is driven down the street and purchased a crate of them from one of my favorite restaurants. But if I were going to attempt these, I’d probably start with this recipe from Tea for Turmeric (by a Pakistani American food blogger whose recipes rarely miss.)
• Mint tea 🍵 Haters will say a hot drink doesn’t belong on this list. To those people, I say: I believe in science. In all seriousness, folks in some of the hottest parts of the world have been drinking hot tea to cool down for millennia. And while the particular type of tea varies from culture to culture, mint tea — the national drink of Morocco — has been my saving grace this summer. 
• Red drink 🍉 There are versions of this (with different names) everywhere from Dakar to Bridgetown to Galveston. And while Red Drink is often associated with Juneteenth, it’s versatile and cooling enough to be consumed all season long. I’m a Rooibos-girly, so the version I turn to again and again is this one, from Bryant Terry’s Afro-Vegan cookbook. But the possibilities for this drink are endless, and the recipes are everywhere.

Remember: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Or as I like to say, roughly 104 ounces of water is worth a pound of heat stroke. So drink up, my friends. And keep following our coverage — across NPR, we’ll continue to follow this extreme heat, its disproportionate effects on communities of color, and the consequences it’s had for people’s ability to live, thrive, worship and work.

Until then, try to stay cool any way you can. And in the immortal words of my colleague B.A. Parker: HYDRATE.

This story was written by Leah Donnella and edited by Courtney Stein.