Magic Ingredients: Vinegars

Salty, Sweet, Sour and Bitter.. and the new Savory (edemame).

We have four basic tasting capacities and perhaps a 5th if we add the edemame advertising campaing’s savory . Sour is Number One with me!  I’ll choose a dill pickle over a donut any day. Add a tall rib of celery and that’s good enough for lunch.

Vinegar is categorized as a sour flavor and it has been my favorite taste since I was just 1 year old.  Pickles, pickled peppers, and pickled vegetables are fantastic food products that are easy to make at home. If you cannot find cucumbers, but zhucchini are available, you can pickle them in place of cucumber slices and hardly be able to tell the difference.

A number of different types of vinegar can be used to make pickles, deglaze pans, marinate meats, and add tang to vinaigrettes, sauces, and desserts. White vinegar and newspaper make a good combination for cleaning windows!

Acetobacter aceti bacteria added to diluted wines, ales, or fermented fruits or grains result in some type of vinegar as the end product.  Acetic acid forms to in the base food or beverage to provide the delicious sour flavors.  

If left sealed,  most vinegars can be stored for up to two years in a cool, dark place, while opened vinegar is best within its first three to six months. Molds can grow in it and one is the harmless “mother” one finds in dill pickles from time to time. 

1. Low calorie salad dressings can contain vinaigrette ingredients like mild vinegars: balsamic, fruit flavors, or rice wine vinegar, among others. With flavored vinegars, I use no oil at all on my salads. My favorite dressing is a little cider vinegar and a scattering of cilantro, my Hero Herb.
2. Use vinegar to tenderize meats - it breaks down protein fibers without the side effects of papain (diarrhea and stomach problems). Tenderizing marinades containing vinegar also taste good.
3. Peel hard-boiled eggs by first adding teaspoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of salt to the cooking water. This results in easy to remove shells. When you dye eggs for holidays, place a teaspoon of white vinegar into the dye bath to set the color.
4. Use vinegar to cook out excessive bitterness. Flavored or herbed vinegars are very good for this, but any vinegar can help. If you have some bitter cabbage, sock it in a water-vinegar solution or cook some vinegar into it.
5. Add vinegar to cooking water of almost any vegetable to brighten it's color.

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A caution : If cooking with vinegar, use pans and cooking utensils made of stainless steel, glass, enamels, or wood. Vinegars will eat through aluminum and some other metals and can discolor some plastics.

Vinegars are as widely varied as the foods grown in each region of the world.

White vinegar is mass produced cheaply, distilled from ethyl alcohol. it has a rather "common" taste and often finds use as a cleaning agent in household applications. It makes good quick dishes out of sliced cucumbers and onions for the summer dinner table, though. A few tablespoons added to water and sprinkled over fresh fruits will keep them from browning and wilting as well (this is acidulated water).

Red wine and white wine vinegars are popular in French cooking, but Asian cuisine makes good use of rice wine vinegar. In addition, these vinegars can be substituted for red and white wines in cooking where you wish to avoid beverage or cooking alcohol or the components of wines that can result in migraine headaches. Vinegars are heroes among cooking ingredients in that way.

Red and white wine vinegars are great in marinades and vinaigrettes and marinades, while Italian balsamic vinegar lends a darker, sweeter flavor. Spanish sherry vinegar is a stronger flavor and can be overpowering, yet delicious. In America cider vinegar is king, while in Canadian and UK, malt vinegar prevails, especially with fish and chips. Indigenous Peoples have traditions of their own favorite vinegars as well.

Fruits and Herbs

Many middle-range and upscale markets carry designer vinegars in differently-shaped bottles, tall and squat, square and the simply odd. You will see herb sprigs floating in some of them. Other bottle will be dark you cannot see into them. These can run to some expense, but you can make herbed vinegars at home from dozens of Internet recipes and those of cookbooks. Fruits make another good base for vinegars, resulting in flavored varieties.

As far as fruit is considered, nearly anything that will ferment can be coaxed into vinegar. I enjoyed a tangy peach vinegar once and was entralled by its flavor.

Other examples of fruit vinegars : Apricot, cherry, raspberry,pomegranite,  hibiscus, key lime. huckleberry, cranberry, orange, pear, blueberry, kiwim fig, date, tomato. If you have another fruit that is a favorite, you can probably use it to make a tangy vinegar.

Honey can be made into vinegar, in a manner similar to that of the fruits mentioned above. However, maple sugar and birch sap can also result in vinegars called "Indian Vinegar." Birch trees are not only beautiful, but yield bark for canoes, homes for birds, wood for tent poles, and sap for vinegar.

The sap from the sugar maple or birch tree is collected as usual for maple sugar making. The buds and twigs available are added to the sap and the whole mix is set in the sun to ferment. When the mixture has fermented a particular species of fly, known as the vinegar fly, if often seen buzzing around the pot. After fermentation, the sap mixture is strained through some type of close-meshed cloth and vinegar is the result.