It's the ultimate in kitchen versatility, dressing your salads with style, adding pizzazz to soup, and even washing windows!
Despite its hard-working reputation, vinegar is showing an elegant side. Infused with fruits and flavored with herbs, the new flavored vinegars are worthy of decorator status and made for celebratory gift-giving. Most important: they're easy to create in your own kitchen.
Start with top-notch ingredients, and know that all vinegar is not created equal. Real vinegar aficionados organize vinegar-tasting parties, applying many of the same methods used in tasting wines: visual inspection for clarity, brilliance, and color followed by a careful check of the aroma.
The vinegars most likely found in your kitchen have distinctive culinary roles:
Distilled vinegar is the least expensive and most versatile of all vinegars but is best when all you want is added sour. Otherwise, it does not contribute color, odor, or flavor.
Cider vinegar adds not just sour but a sour apple flavor as well. It's ideal for enlivening stew or chili or for your favorite pickling recipes.
Rice vinegar has a lovely, smooth sort of sour. With less edge than distilled vinegar, the flavor can stand alone more readily in salads or marinades.
Balsamic vinegar's intense fruity, spicy, sour flavor matures over time as the vinegar is stored in a series of wooden barrels. The assertive flavor is famous for salads.
Wine vinegar is truly the champagne of vinegars and the best foundation for fruit-infused flavored vinegars. Made from grapes and aged to a delicate flavor, the fruit base blends beautifully with berries, citrus, and herbs.
You'd like to experiment with flavored vinegars, but don't know where to start? The simple technique varies according to ingredients. It centers on the process of releasing fruit flavors by crushing and steeping. Berry-flavored vinegars can require several weeks of steeping. Citrus varieties are steeped by cooking briefly.
All fruited vinegars offer extra interest when you leave a handful of berries, an orange peel, or some mint leaves floating in the vinegar. They must be processed by the boiling-water method. Use pretty canning jars with decorator lids to perk up your kitchen or for year-round gift-giving.
Nothing sparkles with salads and vegetables like flavored vinegars. The classic role: a delicate vinaigrette. There's no need for a recipe if you remember these tips: Use two parts oil to one part fruited vinegar for a milder vinaigrette - one-to-one for more tartness.
Add spicy mustard, lemon juice, fresh herbs, salt, pepper, honey, or jam in whatever proportions suit your culinary mood.
Vinaigrette is only the beginning of your flavored vinegar journey. Try sprinkling flavored vinegar on broiled fish or simply tossing it with gently steamed vegetables. (Flavored vinegars are exquisite drizzled over wilted spinach or swiss chard.) For a delicious fruit dip or fruit salad dressing, mix fruited vinegar with a combination of yogurt and honey.
Substitute your favorite flavored vinegar for most of the wine in a Coq au Vin (Chicken in wine sauce) recipe for a true American twist. Fruited vinegars are also at home at the end of a meal. Drizzle berry-flavored vinegar over pears poached with brown sugar for a delightful sweet-and-tart dessert.
The bottom line with fruit-flavored vinegar is versatility. Whether you make some as gifts or make some for you, you're sure to find more than one way to use them.
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