18 Jack Daniels Ideas: Bottle Crafts and Whiskey Recipes

That square bottle with the black label is too good looking to put in the recycling, which is why Jack Daniels ideas fall into two halves and both of them are here. The empty bottle becomes a hanging pendant lamp, a hookah, a pair of chalkboard sauce bottles, a hummingbird feeder and a set of stenciled cornhole boards. The whiskey itself goes into chili, sticky meatballs, a copycat grill glaze, cream cheese brownies, salted caramels and a marinade that turns an ordinary pork chop into something worth talking about. Cutting glass is easier than it sounds and most of these recipes are weeknight food with one extra bottle in the lineup. Every project links back to the person who worked it out.

1. Homemade Jack Daniels Hookah

A Jack Daniels bottle fitted with a ceramic bowl, a chrome stem and a long white hose, standing on a kitchen table. One Creative Mama’s husband built the whole thing from an empty bottle, a few spare parts from a broken pipe and odds and ends out of a toolbox in the shed, and spent nothing at all. The useful detail sits in the comments: a glass and tile drill bit cut a clean hole through the bottle, while a diamond tip bit cracked it. Go slow and steady. The bottle shape is what makes it look bought.

Get the full tutorial at One Creative Mama.

2. Jack and Mexican Coke Popsicles

Whiskey and cola popsicles in a galvanized bowl of crushed ice, the frozen bars a deep amber with a cloudy core. Alcohol is the whole problem with a boozy ice lolly and worth understanding before you fill the molds, because alcohol does not freeze. Too much and you get slush that never sets; the ratio has to stay low against the cola. Mexican Coke is specified for a reason, since it is made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup, and sugar affects how hard the pop freezes as well as how it tastes. Give these a long overnight freeze.

Get the full tutorial at Boulder Locavore.

3. Jack Daniels Bottle Lamp

Cut whiskey bottles wired as hanging pendant lights, glowing amber over a work surface, with the step photos showing a bottle being scored and dunked. The Sueeye tutorial cuts the bottom off each bottle and threads a pendant light kit through, and the cutting is the part people fear unnecessarily. A proper glass cutting jig is easiest, but twine soaked in rubbing alcohol, lit around the score line and then plunged into cold water does the same job with nothing bought. Once the bottoms are off, the hard part is behind you. The square silhouette suits a bar or a kitchen island.

Get the full tutorial at Sueeye.

4. Jack Daniels Meatballs

Glazed meatballs piled on a plate under sesame seeds and sliced scallion, with a flattened whiskey bottle beside them. Hugs and Cookies makes the meatballs plainly, one pound of meat with an egg, breadcrumbs, Parmesan and scallions, baked twenty minutes at four hundred on an oiled pan. The sauce is where it happens: a quarter cup each of Jack Daniels, soy sauce, Dijon and brown sugar with scallion, garlic powder, Worcestershire and a tablespoon of cornstarch, cooked a few minutes and poured over. One commenter found it a little mustard heavy, so start light on the Dijon.

Get the full tutorial at Hugs and Cookies XOXO.

5. Jack Daniels BBQ Sauce or Ketchup Containers

A whiskey bottle full of barbecue sauce with a steel pour spout in the neck and a chalkboard sticker label reading K.C. Ketchup, on a weathered picnic table. Jax and Jewels gives the two tips that make refilled bottles work. Soak the paper label until it is completely saturated before you touch it and it peels off in one piece, and buff any leftover adhesive gently with a steel pad. Use a baby bottle brush for the inside. Extra wide pour spouts handle thick sauces, and chalkboard marker needs to be damp before it wipes off, which is why the labels survive a party.

Get the full tutorial at Jax and Jewels.

6. Brilliant Wagon Chandelier Made from Jack Daniel's Bottle or Mason Jars

A wagon wheel hung flat as a chandelier with jars and bottles suspended from its rim, lit warm against a dark ground. The wheel is doing all the work here. It is already round, already spoked and already strong enough to carry a dozen lights, so the build is mostly hanging and wiring rather than making. Whiskey bottles with the bottoms cut off give a taller, narrower shade than a mason jar and throw a more directed pool of light. A chandelier at this weight needs a ceiling joist or a proper anchor, not a plasterboard hook.

Get the full tutorial at Sueeye.

7. Chicken in Jack Daniels Cream Sauce

Chicken breasts sitting in a pale cream sauce flecked with parsley in a steel skillet, with a whiskey bottle and fresh herbs behind. Whiskey in a cream sauce works because the sugar in the spirit catches on the hot pan and lifts everything stuck to the bottom, which is where all the flavor from searing the chicken has gone. Pour it in off the heat, let it reduce until the raw alcohol smell has burned off, then add the cream, and never the other way around, because cream added to a hot pan of spirit will split.

Get the full tutorial at Spicy Southern Kitchen.

8. T.G.I. Fridays Jack Daniels Grill Glaze

Ribs lacquered in dark glaze on a board with a brush and a dish of sauce beside them. Noshing with the Nolands rebuilds the restaurant version and the first step is the one that matters: a whole head of garlic, top cut off, drizzled with olive oil, wrapped in foil and roasted at three hundred and twenty five for a full hour, then squeezed into a paste. Roasted garlic is sweet and mellow where raw garlic would be harsh against the whiskey. Pineapple juice, crushed pineapple, teriyaki, soy, brown sugar, lemon, onion and cayenne make up the rest.

Get the full tutorial at Noshing with the Nolands.

9. Candle Holders

Four squat tealight holders in blue, green and olive glass, each one a bottle bottom that has slumped into a rounded, waisted shape. These are not cut and sanded, they are melted. Marius Urbanavicius cuts the base off a bottle and heats it in a furnace at eight hundred degrees Centigrade, at which point the glass softens enough to close its own cavity under its own weight while the trapped air inside expands and blows the shape outward. The process cannot be fully controlled, so no two come out alike. It is a kiln project, not a kitchen one.

Get the full tutorial at Marius Urbanavicius, via designboom.

10. Jack Daniels Cupcakes for the Grown Ups

Chocolate cupcakes in black spotted cases, piled with swirled cocoa frosting and topped with miniature whiskey bottles and a paper Old No. 30 badge. The cake is a plain creamed sponge baked at three hundred and fifty for twenty to twenty three minutes. All the whiskey is in the frosting, which is three sticks of soft butter, three and three quarter cups of powdered sugar, nine tablespoons of cocoa, six tablespoons of milk, vanilla and six teaspoons of Jack Daniels, beaten until fluffy. Cool the cakes completely first or the frosting slides off. A miniature bottle makes the topper.

Get the full tutorial at Hugs and Cookies XOXO.

11. Jack Daniels Inspired Stenciled Corn Hole Boards

Two plywood cornhole boards on a deck, each stenciled with the Old No. 7 label in black, with bean bags stacked on top and trees behind. The stencil is the easy half. The half that decides whether the game is any good is the build, since regulation boards are four feet by two, with a six inch hole nine inches down from the top, and the frame has to be square or the bags bounce wrong. Stain the plywood rather than painting it and the grain shows through the black label, which is what makes these look like a bar sign.

Get the full tutorial at Sueeye.

12. Jack Daniels Chili

A white bowl of dark red chili topped with sour cream, grated cheese and cilantro, with corn chips and a glass of whiskey beside it on grey boards. Cooking with Curls puts a full eight ounces of Jack Daniels into this, which sounds reckless until you see what else is in the pot: a pound and a half of lean ground beef, two tablespoons each of cumin and chili powder, a tablespoon of ground chipotle, a twenty eight ounce can of crushed tomatoes and two cans of kidney beans. The chipotle and the whiskey together are what make it taste smoked.

Get the full tutorial at Cooking with Curls.

13. Whiskey Cream Cheese Brownies

Thick dark brownies stacked on a wooden board, each one marbled across the top with a pale ribbon of cream cheese. The whiskey does not go where you would expect. A quarter cup of it beats into the cream cheese along with an egg and two tablespoons of flour, so the tang and the alcohol arrive together and cut through four squares of unsweetened chocolate. Half the batter goes in a foil lined nine inch pan, the cream cheese mixture pours over it, the rest of the batter goes on top and only then does the knife swirl. Forty to forty five minutes at 350, and the foil lifts the slab out.

Get the full tutorial at Leah Claire.

14. Salted Whiskey Caramels

Squares of soft amber caramel dusted with flaked salt on a white board, with two miniature whiskey bottles behind. The whiskey goes in at the beginning, not the end: a quarter cup of it comes to a boil with butter, heavy cream, vanilla and a quarter teaspoon of salt, and that hot mixture is what gets poured into the caramelised sugar. Stand back when it meets, because it bubbles up hard. Then it is a thermometer job, ten minutes or so to 248 Fahrenheit and firm ball. Watch the sugar once it starts to color, because it turns fast.

Get the full tutorial at Leah Claire.

15. Jack Daniels Bacon Mac and Cheese

A black bowl of elbow macaroni in a pale cheese sauce, thick with torn pieces of crisp bacon. Bread Booze Bacon builds it on a pound of macaroni with cayenne pepper in the sauce, and cayenne is the smart addition: whiskey and cheese are both rich and sweet, and a little heat stops the bowl feeling heavy after four forkfuls. Add the whiskey to the sauce base before the cheese goes in, so the alcohol cooks off and the cheese never sits over direct heat long enough to turn grainy.

Get the full tutorial at Bread Booze Bacon.

16. Jack Daniels Peach Pie Bars

Peach pie bars cut into squares on parchment, a shortbread base under a layer of golden fruit with a craggy crumble scattered over the top. Whiskey and peaches belong together because the vanilla and caramel notes in an aged whiskey sit in the same place as the flavor of a ripe peach, which is why this reads as one thing rather than two. Bars are also the forgiving format. A peach pie can weep and go soggy underneath, while a pressed shortbread base in a tray holds its edge.

Get the full tutorial at The View from Great Island.

17. Humming Bird Feeder

A whiskey bottle hung upside down from a shepherd’s hook in a garden, filled with amber nectar and fitted with a glass feeding tube. Preserving the label is the step nobody thinks of: two or three coats of clear gloss spray over the paper before anything else, or a summer of rain takes the Old No. 7 off and leaves you with a plain bottle. Wash the inside with dish soap and let it air dry, glue the hanging hook on with E6000 and give it the full forty eight hours the tube asks for. A screw-in feeder tube and boiled sugar water finish it.

Get the full tutorial at Ground Beef Budget.

18. How to Make Jack Daniel's Marinade

A pork chop on a grill rack being basted with dark marinade from a teal silicone brush, over a laid out set of ingredients including a whiskey bottle, soy sauce and brown sugar. A whiskey marinade works on two fronts at once, since the sugar caramelizes on the grill while the acid and salt carry flavor into the meat. Keep the marinating time honest. Pork chops and chicken want two to four hours, beef will take overnight, and fish needs thirty minutes or the texture goes. Reserve some marinade before the raw meat goes in if you want to baste.

Get the full tutorial at wikiHow.