Chive Blossom Vinegar
I took the bottle with the vibrant pink liquid to the cupboard and placed it in front where I can easily see it and grab it. Right beside my choice of vinegar of the moment, honey vinegar. This pink one is like a trophy because I made it. And I'm really happy with the result. I never thought I would ever describe any vinegar as beautiful. It is, isn't it? The color is so vibrant! It has the chive flavor and it's good with salads.
This proclivity towards vinegar started when I was young when I took over food shopping for our family. I kept on finding excuses to buy one bottle after another. I stocked up on all kinds of vinegar available. My Mom used to complain about the amount of bottles I procured and I was the only one who uses them. They were only interested in the local versions made from coconut and sometimes, the stronger one made from cane. I loved instead, the stronger and pungent apple cider vinegar. It's the one that made me cough and teary-eyed. But it didn't hinder my frequent usage of the golden liquid.
Like when I was young, I am still the solitary consumer of vinegar at home, with the help of my son sometimes. The other two at home wrinkle their noses when they catch a whiff of acidity in the kitchen.
There's a wider range of different kinds of vinegar now that it's beginning to be hard to choose what I would really like to have. Well, if I buy one bottle too much, there's always room in my cupboard. My latest find was a small bottle of balsamic vinegar with strawberries.
My chives have all been blooming and I had been using the blossoms continuously on salads. However much I love them in my salad, I can't keep up with the number of blooms swaying outside my kitchen window. I love looking at them but I have to cut them all away anyway. It's always better to take away the blooms of the herbs. That's when I thought it's time to use them somewhere else. One hit with the chive blossoms in Google gave me this idea of chive blossom vinegar. It was perfect!
However, after browsing through recipes at random, I found that there are 3 ways to do it. One is cooking the vinegar (not boiling) and pouring it in the jar with chive blossoms. Another one is keeping the blossoms in a jar, fill it up with vinegar and keep it outside, under the sun. The third one is filling up a jar with the blossoms and vinegar, then keeping it in a dark place.
I kept my jar in the kitchen, away from the sun, but not in the dark. I got a satisfying result.
Chive Blossom Vinegar
Ingredients:- chive blossoms
- white wine vinegar (or white vinegar)
- Wash the chive blossoms under the tap to get rid of insects and dirt. Shake off the water and dry them with a salad spinner or dab them with a kitchen paper towel.
- Fill up a jar with the blossoms.
- Pour the vinegar in the jar.
- Close the lid tightly.
- Leave it between 1 - 2 weeks. (I left mine for a week.)
- After this time, divide the liquid from the blossoms by straining them. Discard blooms.
- Transfer the vinegar to a bottle with a lid.
