Cooking With Vinegar

Before you start cooking with vinegar have a look at this list. It gives a summary of each of the six vinegars commonly used. As you will see, there is a great variety and a large number of uses vinegar can be put to.

Before we get into that though, it's interesting to just repeat where we get vinegar from. Vinegar is the product of alcohol such as wine, beer, or cider, turned into acetic acid normally making up between four and ten percent of the total volume.

The six main vinegars:

White Vinegar (also known as Spirit Vinegar

This vinegar has a strong flavor and is used in pickling mainly. It can be made from molasses but often it has a beer base.

Malt Vinegar

This vinegar is made from unflavored beer and caramel is added to give it the distinctive dark color.

Avoid using this in delicately flavored food as the aroma is quite pungent and it has a slightly bitter taste.

It is often used for pickling fruit and vegetables. It can also be used in chutney making.

Wine Vinegar

With their delicate flavors, wine vinegars are very popular. They are taken from red, rose, or white wines.

It may sound a little obvious, but if the wine is good quality, the vinegar will be a better quality.

Where can wine vinegars be used? Generally in salad dressings, or in sauces and marinades.

Cider Vinegar

Cider provides the base for this vinegar naturally and because of that you might pick up the slight aroma of apples or a slight taste of apples. It is not so acidic as wine vinegar and many like to use a cider vinegar in a salad dressing. It is also very good for sweet and sour dishes.

Rice Vinegar

Rice Vinegar is good for sweet and sour dishes and other Chinese cooking. It is made from rice wine.

Flavored Vinegars

Flavored vinegars are generally based on wine vinegars and they have various extra ingredients added to give it various flavors. For example, Tarragon and Rosemary sprigs may be added or garlic or lemon, or green peppercorns.

When you buy vinegar just make sure it is clear with no cloudiness in the bottle. Vinegar will keep for a long time, up to a year for most of them except flavored vinegars which may start to deteriorate after about six months.

After reading this quick overview of the six commonly used vinegars you have more ideas now on how to utilize this versatile ingredient and maybe you will find yourself cooking with vinegar this week!


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