Living Homegrown Podcast Episode 24 Making Flavored Vinegars

Transcription

1 Living Homegrown Podcast Episode 24 Making Flavored Vinegars Show Notes: This is the Living Homegrown Podcast, episode #24. Announcer: Welcome to the Living Homegrown Podcast, where it s all about how to live farm fresh, without the farm. To help guide the way to a more flavorful and sustainable lifestyle is your host, national PBS TV producer and canning expert Theresa Loe. Theresa: Hey there everyone and welcome to the Living Homegrown podcast. I m your host Theresa Loe. This podcast is where we talk about living farm fresh without a farm. And that s through artisan food crafts, like canning, preserving and fermenting, small space food growing, backyard critter keeping everything from chickens to goats and just living a more sustainable lifestyle. If you d like to learn more about any of these topics or my online canning courses, just visit my website LivingHomegrown.com. Before I dive into today s topic, I just want to tell you that I got quite a response to my podcast a few weeks ago on the KonMari Method of organizing. And if you missed that one, it was episode #22. In it, I talk about the book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It s also sub-titled The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. And I talk in that particular podcast about how I ve been decluttering my entire homestead using this method. Well apparently I m not the only one because many of

2 you wrote in to say that you ve either done this yourselves or you were about to do it. So the whole idea of getting rid of clutter to clear your head and make yourself more productive is really popular with many of you. So I m glad it resonated so much and I m glad you enjoyed that podcast. And if you haven t listened to it, be sure to check it out because it really has been life changing for me. I m still a work in progress but every time I open up my closet or a different cupboard that I ve already done it really, really has been fantastic. It gives you this great feeling. And I have been more productive because of it. So I think it s a good thing. Also, in last week s podcast, I talked about Weck canning jars. And I gave kind of a basic overview of how these jars work and the pros and cons and all that jazz. Well one of my listeners happens to live in Europe. Her name s Karen and she wrote to me and told me very sweetly that Americans are pronouncing the company name wrong. So I wanted to tell you that apparently in Germany that company name is pronounced Veck, with V, even though it s spelled with a W. So it should be pronounced Veck instead of Weck. So my apologies to the Weck company over there that we have been pronouncing it all these years wrong over here in America. Because we pronounce it with a W sound because that s how it reads in English, as Weck. W-E-C-K. And thank you to Karen for letting me know! Okay, so this week s topic is how to make flavored vinegars which can add some really wonderful flavourful pizazz to your kitchen. And I know that may sound like an overstatement but really I think flavored vinegars are very under appreciated and under used. And oh my gosh, they are so easy to make. I make flavored vinegars all year long. I make them seasonally with different things that are coming out of my garden but I especially love to make them in the Fall because they make fantastic gifts come holiday time. So you can use what I m going to talk about today to make flavored vinegars sometime in the next few months and boom you have some wonderful, homemade holiday gifts that are both thoughtful and flavorful. So I think you ll really like this episode.

3 Now just to be clear, I am not talking about making vinegar from scratch. Meaning I m not talking about when you take a vinegar mother and you add it to wine and then turn that wine into vinegar. That s something else completely and although that is a lot of fun and definitely something that we should cover in a podcast in the future that s not what I m talking about here today. Todays podcast is about taking already made vinegar, or commercial vinegar that you buy at the store, and using some of your garden harvest or farmer market finds to create a gourmet flavored vinegar. And you do this by heating the vinegar and steeping your flavorings in there to impart the flavor combo that you want. And you can create some amazing savory or even sweet combinations. So let me give you some examples. Savory combinations could be more traditional like rosemary garlic, or oregano garlic vinegar, chives and chives blossoms, which by the way when you use chive blossoms to make vinegar it creates a beautiful color if you use a clear vinegar to start. You get kind of a purple-y red sort of color and it s gorgeous. Fresh dill lives and dill heads, oh man that makes the most awesome vinegar and I use that in potato salad. Things like that. A hot pepper vinegar is another thing that is a savory delicious vinegar to make and you can use the vinegar that you get in things like salsa and it adds an extra punch to the flavor. It s really great, it adds an extra layer. Now some of the examples of sweet flavors that you can get with flavored vinegar are things like strawberries and mint, raspberries and thyme, mix those together and make a vinegar, peaches, cinnamon and allspice makes a fabulous vinegar. Blueberry with lemon zest. Or imagine apricots with ginger, that s another one that is really awesome. I m currently right now making kumquat lemon verbena vinegar from my garden. I have a little kumquat tree back here and it s been kind of overloaded with kumquats and I was trying to think of things to make other than kumquat marmalade which I m kind of sick of [laughs] so I m making some vinegar. And I also had some lemon verbena and I thought it would be a fun combination. I ll let you know how it turns out but it looks really pretty in the jar. So I m doing that right now.

4 So any time that you are trying to come up with a combination for something that is a sweet flavored vinegar, think of desserts and what flavor combinations go well together in desserts. That s why I combine things like peaches with cinnamon because that s a really classic dessert flavor. Also consider any kind of fruit, anything from kiwi to pineapple to citrus all make fantastic vinegars. And there s a lot of different ways you can use them but you get the idea, right? So in today s podcast I m going to talk about why you don t need a recipe to do this, it s really simple. The basic formula that I use and it s very forgiving so you can adjust it to your own liking, the 3 main vinegars that I suggest are the best to use for your base, and I ll give you the pros and cons of each one. The one base vinegar that I never use and one vinegar that you can use in a pinch if you really have to. And I ll go over how you make the vinegars and how you store the vinegars. So it s a lot to cover in one podcast so let me get started. First of all why would you even want to make vinegars? You re probably saying to yourself well that all sounds really delicious Theresa but what the heck do I do with these after I ve made them? Well first of all you can make salad dressing or classic vinaigrettes with any of these vinegars and they all impart a really wonderful flavor. And that s kind of a given what people would think of normally to do with a flavored vinegar is to make a salad dressing. That s the main reason people make them. And making salad dressing is so simple and inexpensive and it takes regular lettuce to a whole new level. If you don t make your own salad dressing and you get nothing else out of this podcast but the idea of hey, I might like to try that sometime go to my website for the show notes for this episode. They ll be at LivingHomegrown.com/24 and just download and try one of the salad dressings I ll link to. They re so easy! And the best part is when you make salad dressings yourself not only are they delicious, you know exactly what s in it. It doesn t have any of the junk that you normally find in the bottled salad dressings that you find in the store. And it s perfectly okay to just make vinegars for salad dressings and vinaigrettes. You ll get a lot of

5 use out of your vinegars if you do nothing but just that. And in fact if you give a bottle as a gift I always suggest that you attach a salad dressing or a vinaigrette recipe to the bottle so that whoever you give it to will know how to use it. It s real simple and it s so delicious. So if nothing else that s a great reason to make these vinegars. But there are a lot of other ways that you can use flavored vinegars besides salad dressing. Now keep in mind that vinegar is used in cooking as a flavor enhancer. It bumps up the other flavors. Kind of like salt. So you can use flavored vinegar for making any marinades or BBQ sauce or homemade mustard or salsa or anything or any recipe that you make that calls for regular vinegar in the recipe. Instead of using the regular vinegar you pull one of your flavored vinegars off the shelf and it adds another layer and kind of takes whatever you re making to another level. Seriously. It just gives it that extra punch. Another way that you can use flavored vinegars is in making reduction sauces. A flavored vinegar can be used to deglaze a pan after you sauté meat or vegetables and you end up with this killer reduction sauce. It s lots of flavor without the salt. So you can always use a vinegar for that. Another way that you can use vinegars which is kind of unusual is in a beverage. And I know that sounds kind of weird but you can add a splash of fruit or sweet flavored vinegar to a tall glass of iced soda water and it s actually very refreshing. I kid you not! I m actually partial to using blueberry vinegar for this purpose but cucumber vinegar is also really nice. It s very refreshing. Now when you do that, it s considered a spritzer. But there s another drink using vinegar called a shrub. Not a shrub like out in your garden, but an old fashioned colonial drink called a shrub. And it s kind of similar except it has the addition of sugar. It s where you basically make a flavored vinegar with sugar and then you use this vinegar syrup to either make cocktails or non alcoholic drinks. So if you re interested in that there s even books on how to make shrubs. And it s a whole other topic so I m not going to go into how to do that but just know that vinegars can be used in beverages too.

6 Okay, so now you know why you might want to make these flavored vinegars, let s dive into some of the steps for making them. First of all, we have to pick the vinegar. And I use store-bought vinegars not homemade vinegars because I want to be assured of the acidity. Now acidity is really important whenever you re doing any kind of food preservation and it s important to use vinegars that have at least a 5% acidity. And you can t always be sure when using homemade vinegars when you the transition of wine into vinegar. So don t use homemade vinegars for this purpose. And when you re buying the store-bought vinegars, make sure that the bottle says 5% acidity or more. It s just important because the food added and the food flavor that comes from those foods stays preserved at that acidity and it s a safe acidity for keeping things at room temperature. And don t use any vinegar that says on the bottle that it s already seasoned. You want to season it yourself, right? And usually seasoned means they ve added sugar to it and that s not what we want. So first I m going to start by telling you the one vinegar that I do not recommend using and that s white distilled vinegar. I know many people do use white distilled vinegar when they re making flavored vinegars and they love it, but I just find this type of vinegar to be very sour and very strong and not gourmet so that is not a vinegar that I would ever use. It s great for making pickles if you want that sour flavor but with a fruit or an herb vinegar where you want the flavors of the food to stand out? Not so much. So I never use this type of vinegar for this type of project. I really feel that if you re going to go to all the trouble of making flavored vinegars you want it to taste magnificent, right? So don t use that kind of vinegar. So what kind of vinegar should you use? Well one vinegar that is great choice is white wine vinegar. It has clear color, it s great for all the fruit vinegars and any delicately flavored herbs like chervil, so I use white wine vinegar for my base whenever I m doing something like a strawberry or a blueberry or a blackberry or even a peach vinegar. It takes on a bit of the color of whatever you put into it and in the case of like cranberries or raspberries? That color is gorgeous. Also, white wine vinegar is not terribly

7 expensive and you can sometimes buy it in bulk. In fact you sometimes buy any of these vinegars in bulk. I always try restaurant supply companies and even places like Costco and Smart n Final. And you can even sometimes buy in bulk online at places like Amazon. So absolutely do some searching and you can sometimes buy white wine vinegar in gallon jugs. And that brings down the price quite a bit. Another great one to use is red wine vinegar. It s an excellent choice for any of the stronger flavors like rosemary, garlic, oregano, sage, or hot peppers. Anything savoury is really really good in the red wine vinegar. Now my absolutely favorite vinegar to use by far is champagne vinegar. But it s also the most expensive vinegar and it can be difficult to find. I ve purchased it from restaurant supply companies in the past but I have just recently seen it online as well. Now champagne vinegar is like a refined white wine vinegar. It s very delicate, it s very light and whatever you put in it really, really pops. So a champagne vinegar is just like you would imagine, it s high quality. And it s a fantastic way to really showcase whatever flavour you re trying to bring out. So those are my three choices for making this type of vinegar. It s white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar and champagne vinegar. And you re probably wondering now well what about apple cider vinegar because that s absolutely common. It s inexpensive. And can t you use this? Well, yes you could use apple cider vinegar. I only reserve it for a last resort. I prefer the other vinegars first and foremost and here s why. Apple cider vinegar tends to overpower the flavours that you re trying to impart. It s not quite as sour as white distilled viengar. It has a much better flavour but it s still a bit strong. And the other vinegars I ve mentioned have a lighter flavour so they are much better choices. Also, apple cider vinegar is already dark and when you steep things in it it tends to get even darker which can make it not as appealing as the other vinegars. And yes I know red wine vinegar is dark as well but it has such a lighter flavor than apple cider vinegar it tends to showcase the more robust flavors in a little bit of a better way than an apple cider vinegar does. And I

8 know that color is only a visual thing and now a flavor thing, but to me the visual appeal of the food is a really important component. Especially if you re giving these as gifts. So it is the least expensive of all the vinegars I mentioned and it s totally okay to use it if you want to try it with a stronger flavor like maybe a rosemary but I absolutely think you ll be happier if you go for white wine vinegar or champagne vinegar or red wine vinegar. Okay, so what about equipment. What special things do you need to make this flavored vinegar? Nothing special. All you need is a wide mouthed glass jar. It doesn t even need to be a canning jar. But it does need to be glass and not plastic. I like to make lots of little batches as well as big batches. So the size of jar that you use can be anything from a quart to a gallon sized pickle jar. And the reason why I say you can use any sized jar is because I have a basic formula that I use and it s based on the size of the jar. So first things first, pick the kind of jar you re going to use and then you can use my formula to make your vinegar. The basic formula is that you fill your jar no matter what size it is up to one third or up to one half way up the jar with whatever your flavorings are. So the fruit and the herbs and the spices and everything only come up to one third to one half way way up the jar. And then you are going to be filling the rest of it with hot vinegar. And yes you can use a little bit less than one third and you can fill up a little bit higher than half way. Nothing bad will happen. I ve just found that that amount one third to one half is just about perfect. Because it yields a really strong flavor in a short amount of time. If you use less, it takes a little bit longer to get a good flavor and if you fill up the jar all the way with your fruit or whatever and then you add the vinegar you end up with not that much vinegar because the fruit is filling up the jar. So that s just my little formula. I like to do it around one third or one half way up the jar and the rest will be filled with vinegar and you end up with a really wonderful flavor packed vinegar.

9 Okay, so you have your jar, you have whatever it is you re going to be making, you ve bought your vinegar. So now you re ready to make the vinegar how do you do it? Alright here are the steps. First, you wash all your jars in hot, soapy water and dry the inside. The reason I tell you to dry the inside of the jar is that if you leave water in the mix it will cloud your vinegar. And you want a crystal clear vinegar when you re all finished. Also, whatever you re putting into the jar, whether it be herbs or fruit or whatever you can rinse them but then pat them dry. They don t have to be perfectly dry but you don t want them soaking wet because those drops of water will make your vinegar cloudy. If you are putting in fruit and it s something large like peaches, then you should cut it up into quarters. But smaller things like raspberries or blueberries you can just put them in whole. And if you re making this in wintertime it s perfectly okay to use frozen fruit. Just keep it frozen, don t rinse it and put it into the jar just like you would fresh fruit. And that s what makes this so wonderful because you can freeze your fruit in the summertime and then make your vinegar just before the holidays and you are making something that s seasonal with something that was homegrown or locally sourced and it makes a fantastic gift. So after you take your clean jar and you add your flavorings to their about one third to one half way up the jar then you re going to heat some vinegar in a pan. And you want to use like a stainless steel or an enamel pan not aluminum. Don t use any aluminum utensils or pans because they ll impart a flavor into the vinegar. So just stick with stainless steel or any kind of enamel pan and you ll be just fine. And how much vinegar you need is really based on your size of jar. In fact what you can do and what I usually do is I measure out about 3/4 of a jar of vinegar and pour that into the pan before I start the rest of the project. So that that way I have about the right amount of vinegar to start. So you heat your vinegar to just before boiling and then you carefully pour it into the jar. And you leave a head space or a space of air at the top that is

10 about an inch or so. And you can even leave several inches, there s no hard fast rule it really doesn t matter. But you want to leave a little bit of space at the top. Don t go all the way up to the top. Or when you stir it you ll end up slopping over the sides. And then you want to cover with the lid or with plastic wrap and a rubber band or whatever you have so that bugs will stay out and the flavor stays in. After that you just set this vinegar on your countertop so that you can watch it. And the reason I have you set it on your countertop is that way you don t forget about it. And I just like to give it a shake everyday or give it a quick stir. The most important thing to remember is that with fruit vinegars that the fruit needs to stay submerged in the vinegar. Sometimes it will float a little bit and that s okay if you re going to be giving it a swish or a stir everyday. But if it s sticking out above the liquid then you need to put in a plate or something inside to push down the liquid. Sometimes I ll use a small little ceramic saucer. I also have fermentation weights that I ve used to hold it down. Whatever you have to hold the fruit down below the vinegar line because anything sticking out above will start to rot. And you don t want that. So you set this vinegar on the countertop and you let it steep for anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 weeks. And it can even go a little bit longer if you need to. But again, there is no set rule here. you re just going to check it every week or so and taste it. And the way I do that is I just dip a stainless steel spoon into the mix and pull it out and taste it. You don t need to swig it or drink a tablespoon to tell. It s pure vinegar so you wouldn t want to do that but if you just take a little taste you ll be able to see if the flavours have imparted yet. And usually around 3-4 weeks is long enough. When it seems to be really flavorful and you think it s ready then it s time to strain it. If it s a fruit vinegar it will need to be strained several times to get all that pulp out. Because the fruit tends to kind of disintegrate while it s in there and you want to end up with a clear vinegar. So what I do is I first strain any fruit vinegars through a big sieve to get the big pieces out. And

11 then I strain it again through cheesecloth. And if you don t have a cheesecloth you could use a tea towel. I sometimes have to strain things like peaches, the peaches tend to really fall apart I will strain my peach vinegar about three times before I get something crystal clear. And some people take it as far as doing the final straining with coffee filters and I have done that in the past. But I really don t think it s necessary because you get a pretty clear vinegar with just the cheesecloth. And sometimes when a bottle has been sitting in the pantry shelf for a long time, maybe 3-4 months after straining, you can end up with a little bit of sediment at the bottom and I think that s perfectly acceptable. Especially with something like a peach vinegar where you may have little tiny bits of the peaches still in there. But if you don t want that then you re going to have to do a final straining through coffee filters. It just sometimes takes a long time to drip through those coffee filters. But it s perfectly okay to do that if that s what you want. After you re all done straining and you have this crystal clear flavorful vinegar, the final step is to pour it into clean vinegar bottles or small canning jars or whatever it is you want to keep your vinegar in. If you re giving it as gifts I definitely would buy some small decorative vinegar bottles and they re available everywhere. But I will give you some resources in the show notes for this episode. And when you buy those bottles be sure to buy whatever kind of cap goes with the bottles. I like to use corks on top. There s corks that have a little handle on the top. There are screw top vinegar bottles. So pick whatever it is that you find that is affordable for what you want to do whether keeping it for yourself or as a gift. Now once you have made these wonderful vinegars and you re starting to use them, how do you best store them? Well they re vinegars after all obviously so they actually store and keep for a very long time. Years really! However, they do start to lose some of their powerful flavor qualities and their color within a year. And fruit vinegars tend to lose their flavor and color faster than the savoury herb vinegars. After a year they kind of turn dark and their flavor starts to go and I always try and use mine up within months. Now understand they re still good as far as being safe after that time but they re just not good as in flavor. So it s best to try to use them within a year to 18 months on the outside.

12 Also you have probably seen photographs where they show these beautiful vinegar bottles all lined up on the windowsill so the light is shining through and it looks awesome for the picture. But don t do that for your bottles if you re planning on using them. Sunlight will make vinegars lose that color and that flavor so much faster. Like within just a few weeks to a month. So it s best to keep them in your pantry in a cupboard. If you do want to set them out of on the countertop just make sure they re not near any windows because sunlight is not a good thing for flavored vinegars. So that s it! It s pretty easy to make flavored vinegars. It really takes hardly any effort at all. And yet the resulting vinegars make the most amazing salad dressings and marinades on the planet. And it doesn t cost very much for you to give it a try. You don t even need any special equipment. I hope you ll consider even just making one small batch with something that s in your garden right now before you really dive into fall and you ll end up with a seasonal, homegrown, homemade flavoring for your kitchen. if you would like links to any of the information I talked about, or a PDF of the entire episode as a transcript, or if you just want to leave me a note or a question on this topic be sure to go to LivingHomegrown.com/24 I would love to hear from you! So that s it for today. I ll be seeing you next week. Thanks so much for listening. I know how busy you are and I really appreciate that you took time out of your busy day to spend it listening to this podcast. So be sure to keep working on those food choices that are local, seasonal and homegrown. Take care! Announcer: That s all for this episode of the Living Homegrown podcast. Visit LivingHomegrown.com to download Theresa s free canning resource guide and find more tips on how to live farm fresh, without the farm. Be sure to join Theresa Loe next time on the Living Homegrown podcast.