Most fruit-flavored vinegars that you can purchase in the grocery store are too sweet and fake tasting for me. So in the summertime, when fruit is abundant and cheap, I like to put up a bottle or two of fruit vinegar. Nothing could be easier or tastier. It's cherry season here on the west coast, so this week it was cherry vinegar!
I had a handful of leftover fresh cherries after last week's cherry roasting experiment, so I thought I would try making some cherry vinegar. I found a great recipe in Sally Schneider's The Improvisational Cook. (Side note: I love this book and highly recommend it. Sadly, it seems to be out of print right now, so if you see one in an used book store or sale bin, snatch it up. You won't be sorry!)
Sally explains that she had tossed a handful of smashed cherries in some cheap red wine vinegar, including the pits and stems in hopes of invoking the taste of cherrywood barrels. The initial results were so-so. But she stashed the bottle in the back of her cupboard and forgot about it for several years while it aged and mellowed. When she tested it again, she found a deliciously complex, smooth vinegar. She now uses balsamic vinegar in place of the regular wine vinegar to eliminate the long aging step.
For my experiment, I used dead ripe bing cherries and a bottle of Trader Joe's Balsamic Vinegar (you do not want to use a good balsamic.) I was a little concerned that the TJ brand was going to be too cheap tasting, but it was all I had on hand so I gave it a try.
Cherry Vinegar
2 cups (approximately) smashed ripe cherries, with pits and stems
1 bottle of inexpensive balsamic vinegar, enough to cover the cherries by a few inches
Sally says you can pulse the cherries in a food processor but I just smashed them in a bowl with a fork (their ripeness really helped here.) I then covered the cherries with the vinegar by several inches, as instructed, topped the bowl with a plate to keep the fruit flies at bay and set it aside.
Each day I dipped a finger in and tested the vinegar. It did start out a little harsh but after the first week, it had already begun to mellow and allow some of the cherry to come forward. After 10 days, I strained the cherries and decanted the vinegar into a clean jar. The 10 day mark is very random: I needed a hostess gift and decided the vinegar would do, so that determined the timing here. Before I screwed the top on, I plopped in three cherry pits. Why? I'm not sure except that it seemed like the right thing to do.
I'm going to try this again, only I'm going to not strain out the cherries. I'm curious to see if keeping the cherries in longer will encourage even more cherry/cherrywood flavors. We'll check back in a year or so and see what happened!
For more great tips about cooking and life in general, visit Sally Schneider's web page The Improvised Life.
Related: In Praise of Cherry Vinegar and Simple Summer Salads
(Images: Dana Velden)
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i know a lot of fruit pits and seeds are poisonous. are cherry pits safe to keep soaking in the vinegar for so long?
This is interesting. I think I'll give it a go too.
I did a similar thing with strawberries - left a pint of strawberries macerating in a pint white wine vinegar for a couple of days with a little sugar. The result is a bright pink vinegar that makes a tasty salad dressing!
Dear twelve:
Thanks for the heads up on the safety of cherry pits, which seems to be a somewhat controversial subject. Apparently, they do contain a very small amount of cyanide but whether or not that is problematic is not clear.
There are a lot of recipes that contain cherry pits online, and several testimonies from people who occasionally eat cherry pits and have lived to tell the tale. I do not know if vinegar has any affect on the cyanide, positive or negative.
If you are concerned about this, then I recommend that you pit the cherries and omit the pits in this recipe. I imagine that this will still produce a delicious, fruity vinegar.
what can you use fruit vinegars for? I have never used them, but they look good!
shawnwich:
In most cases, fruit vinegars are just like regular culinary vinegar, only they tend to be a little sweeter and have some flavor of the fruit used to make them.
You can use fruit vinegar in almost any vinaigrette recipe, substituting it for the regular vinegar. This is especially true for balsamic vinegar.
You can also use it in marinades, especially for pork, as well as in sauces or chutneys. If your fruit vinegar is especially fine (sweet, mellow, syrupy) then you can also use it in desserts, such as poured over ice cream or tossed with fruit.
I assume the cherry vinegar will keep on the shelf just the same as the regular vinegar?
I was initially skeptical about this but had a bunch of cherries that were just a little past their prime so I tried it. Mine have been marinating in a bottle of white balsamic I had taking up room in the cupboard and OMG. It's been 3 days and it's already delicious (I did pit and cup up my cherries). Can't wait to make some cherry-flavored vinaigrettes.
I made plum vinegar a few years ago. I just took some superripe Italian plums (they're small and ugly), popped 'em in white vinegar and let it sit for several months. Delish!
Hi, Thank you for your words about my book The Improvisational Cook. It is out-of-print BUT will be coming out next spring 2011 in paperback. In the meantime, you can find the hardcover new or used on Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's alternative sellers pages.
Pickled young ginger is popular chinese side dish. I make them about once a year when young ginger is in season. The pickle may sit in the fridge for a few months. The vinegar left in the bottle after finishing the ginger is wonderful as a salad dressing, adding some honey if its a bit too sour. I was thus inspired to make fruit vinegar. I have also pickled raddish and papaya, sometimes adding coleus leaves. They taste really good. My latest experiment was using wild blueberries.