I have Vinegar-philia

TedW

TedW

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I now love the stuff. I used three premium vinegars in a sauce for butt last week. Basically a Carolina vinegar sauce (vinegar, sugar, ketchup and peppers). I ordered these vinegars online just for this sauce. What the hell.

Anyway, while the butt was great, I've had (bad) pulled pork before. The vinegars, however were amazing. A real eye opener. I have since been doing some reading and am infatuated with them. What an amazing flavor delivery system.

I have always liked white vinegar, the Heinz Apple Cider Vinegar, and Balsamic. These specialty vinegars are in a different category. To me, anyway. I can't wait to build a sauce for ribs with these. By the way, I used pear, apple cider and aged balsamic.

Does anyone else use these specialty vinegars?
 
I like vinegar but have resisted the phillia. I've read a couple of articles on sipping vinegars and would like to try that.
 
I've never tried any of the specialty vinegars but I do love a vinegar based mop sauce on my pork.
After reading how excited you are about them I may have to expand my horizons a little.
 
Then you will have a blast from a complex vinegar-based sauce called Tennessee Red (by Blues Hog).
 
I have always liked the sweetness of balsamic when it comes to building sauces, for short money trader joe's has a good one.
 
cameraman said:
I like vinegar but have resisted the phillia. I've read a couple of articles on sipping vinegars and would like to try that.
Click to expand...


sipping vinegars? that got my attention.. I was in N.C. last week and tried Carolina vinegar based sauce and loved it, but sipping vinegar sounds like I need to read up on it ...since i have been known to drink the pickle juice and olive juice....always figured it was bad for me though....now i gotta read about it.
 
I love quality specialty vinegars. BBQ just isn't the same without high quality vinegar. The same as using the best meats, or best rub ingredients, etc.

I'm spoiled, there's a place down the road from me that I get to go sip and sample vinegars from, and always walk out with some. They also have some great olive oils.
http://www.thetastefulolive.com/
 
I really like champagne vinegar and even supplement it with a bit of balsamic for use instead of red wine vinegar. Regular old apple cider vinegar rocks too
 
Tim has moved to Livermore and is now addicted to boutique ingredients and fancy wines :p Actually, I love vinegars, one of the little secrets of great cooking of all types. I usually have a few different types around.
 
TedW, welcome to a whole new world of obsession. My wife and I are both completely hooked on vinegar -- we put some type of it in almost everything we make. At the present time, our pantry has distilled white, red wine, white wine, champagne, apple cider, unfiiltered apple cider, rice wine, seasoned rice wine, balsamic, aged balsamic, and balsamic glaze.
You know, now that I've typed all that out, I realize just how insane it sounds...
 
Chezmatt said:
TedW, welcome to a whole new world of obsession.... . At the present time, our pantry has distilled white, red wine, white wine, champagne, apple cider, unfiiltered apple cider, rice wine, seasoned rice wine, balsamic, aged balsamic, and balsamic glaze.
You know, now that I've typed all that out, I realize just how insane it sounds...
Click to expand...

Not really that different than having dozens of marinades, salad dressings, types of pepper, etc. I have at least a dozen different salts. I have lots of vinegar too - but the $ tops out at costco balsamic. It is actually good enough to pour into a shotglass and drink. I hated balsamic prior to finding this one, but I am sure there are even better ones out there.
 
Cook said:
Most people that like a vinegar sauce tend to love it. Most people that don't like it tend to hate it.
Click to expand...

This is so true, my roommate gets visibly annoyed when I cook my vinegar sauce in the kitchen. He hates it, even when I make a vinegar light sauce, if it has vinegar, he won't touch it.

On topic, I use at least 4 different vinegars in my sauces, typically red wine, rice, tarragon infused, and balsamic. If I'm short I'll sub with regular white, but that typically just gets used to clean out the coffee maker.

Another thing I've discovered is a couple small drops of sesame oil in any vinegar sauce adds some depth of flavor. Then a bit of rooster sauce for the top end of things.
 
The wife and I are vinegarholics. She uses it on EVERYTHING, I usually show some restraint. I’ll put a shot in a big cold glass of water, it’s just as good as a squeeze of lemon or lime.

So I was talking the Italian guy across the street one weekend, he was admiring the UDS, we started talking about making wine. He said he makes his own wine and adds that he makes his own vinegar. He said he would give me some one day. Little did I realize it consisted of a whole freakin’ 5 gal bucket!

He keeps a couple of these 5 gallon buckets in a room off the garage, dumps his old homemade wine in the bucket. The “mother” lives in the liquid converting the alcohol to vinegar.

It is the most awesome flavored vinegar you could ever ask for, and would recommend to anyone who likes vinegar to give it a try.

I don’t know how you get your mother in the bucket, but you should try…. J

RMR
 
My local homebrew shop sells vinegar mothers (as well as cheese cultures and such), probably others do as well. It takes a lot of patience to make wine, I never made the leap to vinegar though. Could be fun if you can handle the wine making. It's not for everyone, but is fun.
 
Im looking into this very thing. The premium vinegars start as a fruit wine, then the alcohol is converted to acetic acid by the bacterial mother (acetobacter) . These premium vinegars are very pricey so I'm looking to DIY.
 
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When I was stationed in Germany one of the local store had a vinegar speciality store in the plaza. They had some that you could put on ice cream they were so good. I used to get a date/fig vinegar that you could sip it was soooooooo good.

Tod
 
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