@ForkReporter- Technique of the Week: Vinegars

Some in Nosrat, I think is how you pronounce her name wrote a brilliant book breaking down cooking into four essentials salt, fat, acid, heat. That's actually the name of the book, And really these are things. The salt is a salt is a taste, but it also has a chemical reaction to it as well. But salt is the only thing salty on Earth. I know, right, sounds like well, of course it would be, but keep in mind it is one of your tastes, salt, and it can only

come from salt. For instance, fat comes from many different places. Acid can come from different places as well, and there's different types of heat. But salt is salt. Is salt. But I love this book because it breaks down the fundamentals of cooking in a beautiful, beautiful way. And I'll use some analogies when I can think of it this way, because I work with photography and I work with graphics and have for many, many years, and one of the

things that you use in good photography is contrast. Now, any illustration or design is going to use contrast. You want depth, you want focus, you want lights and dark and all of these things. And strangely enough, that's the same thing you want in cooking. And acid is one of those things that's gonna bring out. It's going to brighten food. It's gonna cause contrast. When something looks kind of hazy. I know it's kind of a hazy day today, it's supposed to burn off. Of course, this is the

first official full day of summer. And there's something when it's gray or there's no real shadows, everything kind of looks bland out right. Well, imagine when the sun comes out and you have very striking or harsh shadows. It also doesn't only create that contrast of dark and light. But notice that once the gray burns off today, that you're going to see more vibrancy in the colors those red umbrellas you have in the backyard, or the blues of a of a T shirt or dress or whatever,

they're gonna become more vibrant. That's kind of what acid does as well. It's like the sun shining on things. It just makes something flat become bright and wonderful. There have been times where I would make something, you know, like a vegetable dish or something, or maybe a stew, and I taste it, and the salt the seasoning tastes right, and everything kind of tastes right. But to me, it's like bland. You know, it just is bland. And then all of a sudden, I think I'm gonna pop some

acid in there. And acid comes from vinegar. Acid can come from citrus, Acid can come naturally in things like tomatoes and the like. But this I need a pop. I'll reach for vinegar. And each vinegar has a flavor base and differences about it that create another level to your palate. And so yes, it can brighten, it can create contrast, but it balances things out. Salt makes things taste more like themselves. Shouldn't be salty. Salt should awaken your taste

but buds to taste whatever your you know enjoying. So if it's meat, that meat should taste more lammy if it's lamb, more beefy, if it's beef, more poultry e if it's poultry. Acid is going to balance those flavors out. The harmony is like a filter that brings everything together, makes them all sound like themselves, but in a symphony of flavor that they kind of have their individuality but doing it altogether. So the most versatile sources of acid

gonna be vinegar. Like I said about things like tomatoes or citrus, They're going to add other things to the base as well that maybe you don't want. But vinegar you can find in different notes and different variants, but they're gonna come together. It's very available to those of us who are home cooks, and some are a little more rare than others, but they all have their own flavors and uses if you can ever find them. One of the best places to do it, and I know

are beloved. Bomb Fass that was out there in Claremont is no longer there, but the Ventura San Diego you can still find them. Go and taste to a tasting of vinegars and you'll be surprised that different types of flavors that each one can bring. And there's many others.

You look around town. We have a lot of great olive oil and vinegar places throughout the south Land, and you kind of have to know the taste of these things to be able to choose the right vinegar for you know, whether you're going to pickle something, whether you're going to do a pan sauce or a reduction of some kind. So the key there is to be able to understand the notes and what each will bring. Now, to make vinegar, you only need a few things. It's

very basic. You need alcohol, you need heat, you need oxygen, and you put these things together. And in that too, you're going to add a natural bacteria that kind of converts the alcohol to acid in the first place. So vinegar traditionally made from alcoholic beverages, and these are things that we drink, whether it's a hard sider, a sake, a wine, a beer, these are the things that vinegars

are going to be made out of. If you've ever you know, left the bottle of red wine out or something like that begins to sour, it's basically on its way to becoming vinegar. Not a good vinegar, but a vinegar all right. So American vinegar is, you know, just like any other place. You can get a varieties of them. You can find your white distilled vinegar. These things like white distilled vinegar I used to clean things as well

as to brighten up food. It's kind of the acidity in it is at a place where you can use it to clean and get like tarnish off or god, what am I thinking of? Oh, you know, on your sink or something. If you have mineral build up on your faucet or something like that, you can use distilled vinegar. Some vinegars might say diluted. Other things in there could be manufactured for distributed Buy these things doesn't mean they're bad products. It just means that the brand you're buying

from probably didn't make it themselves. They're taking different parts of the vinegar and putting them together. If if you're looking for different types of vinegars, there's about ten basic categories, and the first one is the one that you probably have in your pantry right now, and that's white vinegar or distilled vinegar. Very simple variety. It's always almost always

made industrially. It's made from distilled alcohol, and generally you take super high proof neutral alcohol, and this is an alcohol that hasn't you know, hasn't spent time in a barrel or anything like that to bring up any of its flavor using industrial fermentation methods, and it turns into a high ascid in vinegar, which then you dilute down and you probably bring it down to normally somewhere around

five percent acidity. And the value to all this, I guess, is that it's made with neutral spirits, so it doesn't have any flavor per se that's going to affect your dish. So stilled vinegar can be used in tons of different ways. Can make cakes lighter, believe it or not, helping set whites in poached eggs. It's one of those things that you heard. You put that in the boiling water and it helps kind of firm up the albumin the whites of the eggs. Very reliable thing that you can use

canned pickles, super affordable. You can buy it in large containers, and it doesn't affect the color of the vegetable, you know, because it's just clear. It's safe for care. All these things make it kind of this household bright crisp neutral. People use it for pickled eggs, Jimmy churry, raspberry vinegrat, these types of things. Technique of the week talking about vinegars, this acid, this wonderful thing acid that brightens and causes

contrast in your dish. And what a great day to talk about it when it's hazy out, because go look outside the lack of contrast. How everything's kind of one note, even bright colors are a little flat. Well, that's the type of thing. When you taste a dish and it tastes like that, that is exactly when you need to brighten it up with vinegar with an acid to give it that extra pop that just separates every single note

into something more beautiful. We talked about your basic vinegar that you have, your white vinegar, your distilled vinegar that you have. I guarantee you use it for cleaning and also for cooking. The next we were just starting to talk about apple cider vinegar. It's made traditionally from a

hard cider alcoholic cider. It offers an acidity from five to six percent, still in the same or similar range as the white or distilled but it does have this apple forward, fruity taste, and that adds just a wonderful pack to what they call quick pickling or quick pickles, salad dressing, for marinades, these types of things. It works out. It's also very good for just giving that extra punch. But unlike the the distilled vinegar that is neutral, it

just did I don't know, vinegary taste. You can add, you know, mix apple cider, vinegar, ginger water, something sweet like you know, maple syrup or molasses, and some people would use that to drink. There are actually drinking vinegars out there that I used to drink vinegar. There were some great Again, you have to find a store that has them in stock. I mean, some people drink at apple cider vinegar, but that's slightly different than something that

has been created for drinking. And again back in the days when we had our partners, sponsors and friends there at vom Foss and Claremont, they have so many that are worthy of drinking on their own. And of course you could still find Vomvass in Ventura and in San Diego and the like, and they were friends of our friend there and Kim in Claremont. So you know that they're good people as well, but you can do tastings of their vinegars and they're just fantastic. So it depends

what you're doing with it. Again, the acidity can go up to six percent, a little bit more than your distilled vinegar. And then there's rice vinegar. I love rice vinegar. Obviously, this is used in Asian food, and it just there is a sort of sweetness about it and something that is distinctive to me that just makes a dish pop. So obviously made traditionally from rice wine or suck, rice vinegar is the least acidic. So we've talked about five percent,

talk about six percent. This goes about four to five percent. It's mild, it's got a mommy ness, a savoriness to it, but it is just lovely hot noor sour sauce goes well with and it just is I just there's something about that flavor to me that just works really well. I like it with carrots, like it with a bunch of things. Sherry vinegar. So if you know on the sense of rice vinegar you look at it as being more mildly acidic, then sherry vinegar is made from fortified wine.

And it's on the other end of the spectrum, so it's going from about six to eight percent acid. So this is when you're going to put it towards tenderizing meat, red meat, it's going to do a great job. Keep in mind, it is a dark vinegar, so if you did use it on poultry or fish or something like that, it's definitely going to transfer that color there, which may or may not be appetizing, has a little bit of non to it, but can be really wonderful and can

brighten up all kinds of dishes. There. Okay, there's some more that I want to get into as well, so stick around and we'll continue talking about technique of the week. And this technique is really kind of breaking down the acid we find in vinegar. It's just a lovely ingredient that a lot of us home cooks. Well, I'll speak for myself. Took me a while and continues to take me a while to really understand. It's like seasoning or

anything else. It really is trial and error and understanding when you need that acid maybe to cut through some of the fattiness, or to separate flavors, brighten flavors, or just elevate a dish and you'd be surprised. A tiny little capful and a big pot of something can really cause separation and contrast that will make the dish go pow. Vinegar.

I'm extending this because vinegar is one of those things that is imperative to good home cooking, good cooking period and so for Technique of the Week, I thought i'd go through these, going through the ten, the ten big ones that you need to know about and that you can use. Acidity is important to the way it brightens flavor, causes contrast, and adds It adds that jouje when something just seems flat, and what a day to talk about

it with it being a hazy June day. You look out and that's kind of like in photography or the way we see things and how they can kind of look flat. You don't have shadows, and sometimes that's what you want when you're taking doing photography, but in a case like this, there's no vibrancy to the colors and things like that. Well, that's kind of what acid brings to it is like what light brings to photography. Brighten things up, causes contrast, and that's what we need in

our food. Sometimes so white wine vinegar vinegars that you know, wine vinegars tend to be kind of the middle of the road when it comes to the acidity, so they kind of stay around that five percent mark, right, and that makes them versatile. That makes them have a lot of play in what you can do with them and how you use them. I have fortified wines like Lily Blanc that I will use in cocktails, and fortified wines

obviously go back into the refrigerator once they're opened. You don't leave them out, and they do go bad, whereas a vinegar is going to have higher acid and it's going to stay more stable for longer periods time. But I'll do that when I'm doing a dish and vegetables and I'm like there's just something lacking. I'll take a fortified wine like LeBlanc and that I use for mixing a cocktail or something and all just pour a little

bit of that in there. But when you want the super versatility of something in the middle row the wine vinegars, in this case, white wine vinegar ends up being really great. It's easily found at the grocery store, but you can find, you know, different varieties as well. You can find a chardonnay looking at looking at you, farren a Pino, You've got champagne, other grapes, regions, whatever, They're going to add their own flavors and that are going to add to

the acidity as well. So it depends on what you're cooking, but you can use champagne vinegar as a base ingredient in a barbecue marinade, believe it or not, an adobo, things like that. Many chefs in an article I was reading or breaking down these different styles of the use of vinegars and when they use them, and it really it really goes to show you how we're still these things are having these Food and Wine did a wonderful breakdown on vinegars, which is where I was pulling a

lot of information from just great, great content. A white vinegar is good for chicken breast, Like I said, the color of the vinegar could change the color of the meat depending on how you're using it. And sometimes a red wine might look great with the chicken that you're doing, and it causes this richness and this great color to it. However, sometimes it may cause a color that is unfavorable because it just looks muddied or grayish or something like that.

So when you're using it in poultry or fish, the white is light, so it adds. It's not as jar on an off putting as it can be. Acidity, Like I said, about five percent mild balanced. You can use it for all kinds of things, candy, bacon, wedge, salad. Red wine vinegar is going to play in that similar pool generic blended versions of highly specific specific wine red wine.

Like you can get a cab or you can get a Pinot noir or something like that, and it makes its red wine vinegar, you know, sit in that same category about five percent acidity. You can get a California Surrah. All these different things are going to bring slightly different flavors to the table, but the acid is still going to be doing what it's doing. Some people even use red wine vinegar as a bitter or something in their cocktails. It could be as high as seven percent, but it's

you floating around the five percent range. Tangy sometimes fruity can add a lot to it. Now one that I love because this can fall into sweet and savory depending on its thickness and flavorings and things like that. But a balsamic vinegar. And I know there's many of you, and I've heard from you before that you do not like balsamic vinegar. I absolutely adore it, and I keep

a number of different types here. A maletti is one of the ones that I absolutely love, and again that came from our friends at voon Fass, and to me, it is gold. It is absolute liquid gold. I put it on top of, you know, if I'm making an avocado toast or something, or you can even put it on top of vanilla ice cream. It's so sweet and lovely up against that, so it's deep, it's rich. I'll use it to do reductions, all of great things. It really has to do with the percentages of sugars over

the alcohol. That's what kind of breaks it down. They just really cook it down and concentrate those sugars and it just gives it that sweetness to it. Sometimes it's aged in barrels, or it's always aged in barrels, but sometimes it's aged for much longer, but it's got to have a minimum of twelve years and just the flavors of it in a gosh. I love it with red meat. I love it on salads. There's so much that you can do with it, and it really is one of

those wonderful, wonderful things. Kind of an extended technique of the week as we're talking about the ten top vinegar types. Vinegar is incredibly important to cooking and separating flavor, brightening things up, causing contrast, and it is a wonderful thing. Indeed, we're moving on from balsamic vinegar, which I know a lot of people have different opinions about. I really love it. The sweetness, a bit of tangyness, tends to be pretty rich. I think it goes great on pork chops and the

light I like to put it. I like to grill watermelon during the summer and a little salt and pepper on there, and you can grill it and then you just rizzle a nice high end balsamic vinegar on that. Get it with a fork, You're welcome. Malt vinegar. Malt vinegar is made traditionally with beer and it can be slightly sweet. It's kind of toasty, little nutty typically or just medium plus let's say, with acidity going five percent

six percent. And there are two types, well, there's many types out there, but some make them from IPA one from a porter style beer, and they can be you know, made from an industrial malt mash, and those things aren't made for eating, but you can process the vinegar and make them a wonderful treat for you. Subtle in flavor, maybe not something you'd want to drink, but as it is used it gets a little sweet. It can be complex depending people will use it on a beer battered fish.

That malt vinegar a only things like that, maybe a spicy beer mustard, and then that moves us to black vinegar. Black vinegar is you is put into creation by way of fermentation, just like the other vinegars, but it's fermenting whole grains, so you're using barley or sticky rice or things like that. Very umami, and it just has this pretty intense flavor, multi rich and very flavorful. So you can do it. Use it as a dipping sauce for

dumplings and the like. It originated in China, works very good with Asian cuisines, whether it's Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, works very very well. Honey vinegar, now this is maybe something that might be harder to get depending on where you are. It's made from mead and this honey vinegar is you know, it's not everywhere. It depends where you're shopping, but it has a similar process than the other vinegar or things like that. You ferment it slowly let age. In this

case it's whiskey barrels. It mellows out the vinegar. Use honey vinegar like you would a white balsamic, so it's naturally sweet, brighten up buttercream, ad tan to fruit cobbler, caramelized onion jam, kind of jug it up and kick it up a notch. And it's from low to mid, so it goes between like four and five percent acidity, very sweet, floral. You can use it in a braised chicken, that type of things. So this breaks down the most

basic kind of varieties of vinegar. But again, think about the whole dish, the contrast, the taking us back to the concept of photography or art or design and how if something is monotonous and it seems flat and there's no contrast or no depth or these types of things that often when you find that in a dish, that often is the lack of acidity. You're missing something to cause a vibrancy to the dulness of a dish and

you could have done everything else right. The fat and air is perfect, the heat, the temp that you're cooking is perfect. All of those things come together well. But what you're missing is going to be the lovely, separating and dynamic ingredient of acid. That acid can come from

different places. Even buttermilk has acid in it. That's what causes That's what causes it to become acidic and to get that tanginess that it gets in buttermilk, and you can use That's why many people when they're making a fried chicken will let it marinade overnight in buttermilk because

of that acidity. So it has functional properties like chemical reactions, but also the way it dances on your tongue or wakes up your taste buds in a way for you to be able to taste the different things in a dish in a way that brightens them and causes that contrast. So it's one of those ingredients that I think many of us will you know, make mistakes with or tend not to put in a dish properly, or you know, leave it out. We're afraid that it's going to mess

the dish up. Well, like any ingredient. You can mess a dish up by putting far too much of it in there. But the reality is, just like salt or any other seasoning or fat, that you're going to have to learn the proportions to be able to utilize it in a way that makes everything wonderful and delicious. That's the key of cooking, right. Controlling liquid, controlling temperature, all these things are part of the experience of making a dish at home, and so in this particular case, it's

the acid to focus on. And so I hope that you take some of these ideas, and if you didn't get to hear the whole thing, you can go back and listen to the podcast. Of course, okay if I aim six forty dot com. But play around with it. Even if you set aside a bowl of something, if you're cooking, you don't want to do it in the

whole bowl. You want to set it aside. Just keep in mind that a little goes a long way when it comes to acid, and the way it wakes up a dish is always it always surprises me how just a tiny little bit of in this case, vinegar or something will brighten up a dish. A vegetable dish or something and make it taste cleaner and brighter. I hope that that helps and gets you focused on trying something new if you are not comfortable with it. So Gary

in Las Vegas was commenting on the vinegar segment. I appreciate your kind words, Gary, but saying that he loves bolsamic vinegar and he had issues with ratios. And here's the thing with ratios. It is been said, there's entire books on this about ratios and breaking down cooking into ratios. So whenever you see like a competition show and they make a cookie out of the blue with the ingredients, that's because there is a ratio of baking for cookies,

which I think is one two three. So it deals with the fat, deals with fat, flour, sugar, that type of thing. The easiest way to explain this is a pound cake. The recipe for a pound cake was originally one to one to one to one. I mean it's one pound flour, one pound butter, one pound sugar. And that's what a pound was. Now when it comes to vinigrettes, which is what Gary in Las Vegas was asking about

or mentioning, saying, hey, please talk about this. The standard ratio for a balanced but slightly acidic vinegrete typically is three to one, so that is three parts oil. In most cases, you're probably gonna use an olive oil, So three parts olive oil to one part balsamic. Now that's the standard. However, you can change the ratio to whatever you like. If you want to be sharper, if you want it to be tang tang geer. That's a weird word to say, more tangy. Let's go with that. With

your vinigrette, then you just use more vinegar. Some people will do two to one, or if you really really love the flavor of balsamic vinegar or whatever vinegar you're using, you can use one to one. So then if you went up four to one with the oil, it's going to be more mild, it's going to be richer because you've got more of that fat, more of that oil in there. That is just something, you know. It depends what you can do. You can also add other things. You can add a little bit of mustard to a

multify the dressing. That helps combine that oil and vinegar. It's kind of a middle ground between those two things and brings them together. Some people will add maple syrup or honey, a little bit of salt and pepper. Some people even add a little bit of water to the thin out and wipen up the vinegrette. But standard practice is a vinigrette. A vinegrette is three to one. But just like a martini or anything else, some people have the ratios that they like specifically, and they will call

upon them depending on their taste buds. I personally uh with a vinigrette with a balsamic vinaigrette. I really enjoy the flavor of balsamic vinegar, so I don't mind if you lean on it when it comes to the ratio in favor of the balsamic, just because I think that the flavor is outstanding. The oil is a nice way of breaking breaking it up, giving it a little heft, adding a little fatness stick to your rib goodness, which for me can be something really wonderful because they're in

a salad. You already have so much vibrancy, you know, herbs, lettuce, these types of things that bring out those natural flavors that sometimes a little more viscous and fatty addition to it makes it taste a little more or feel a little bit more substantial to me, and I like that personally, But that is really going to come to your your flavor what you like flavor wise too, So keep in mind ratios, balance acid. There's going to be a lot of people that are going to tell you not the

right way, but the typical way to use something. Now, unless there's a chemical reaction or something that is going to destroy you know how certain ingredients react to each other, then there's really not a wrong way, and there are things that you can do if it comes to flavor. It's like kind of like art. If your taste buds like that, then go for it. I mean, when a banana duct tape to a wall can sell as art, then I think you can add more balslamic vinegar if

you want to your vinaigrette, if that's your jam. But it depends again on your how you taste things, what your taste buds are like to you, and if you're looking for the richness side of things versus the tangy side of things. I'm often fascinated by things that people like or don't like. You know, I tease my son all the time, Can you be my son? You don't like that. You know, he's not crazy on a lot of cheese. Who the hell's not crazy about cheese? Right?

Who don't want Who says, oh, less cheese please? Nobody? Well, my son doesn't always like a lot of don't like a lot of melted cheese or tons of cheese on things. He also is very particular on the amount of butter that goes on his toast. You don't like it too buttery? Again, I asked the kid, How could you? What is too buttery? Nobody from the south saying, hey, there's not enough butter in this, Come on now. But whatever your taste buds are telling you is correct to you. Same with wine,

same with anything. Something's too sweet, take down the sweetness. If something is you know, too tangy, tanks down the tanginess. You do it how you want. There is no across the board. The basic measurements and ratios are always for a balsamic, always going to be three to one, three parts oil to one part acid. That's just what you're going to start with. But how you break down those numbers and ratios and ingredients, well, that's really going to

be to taste. And that's the best part about cooking at home. Right, you're your own chef. You can say, you know what, I like this a little more like this, or I like this a little bit more like that, and then you make that happen. That is the magic of cooking at home. And the best part about cooking at home is being able to cater to your tastes and your family's tastes in a way that makes things specific to you. Bespoke cooking in your own kitchen,