Vinegar Glow-Up

So I thought it would be a great start to the program today with Technique of the Week. There's a book if you don't have it, I would highly recommend it came out and I don't know twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, something like that. 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 heat 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 going to

bring out. It's going to brighten food, it's going to 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 note that once the gray burns off today, that you're gonna 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 now naturally,

and things like tomatoes and the like. But this I need a pop. I'll reach for vinegar, and each vinegar has a a flavor base and 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 uh, 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, 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 all together. 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, in different variants, but they're going to 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 that 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 gonna 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 cider, 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 varietys 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 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. To 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 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 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 acid 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 albumine, the whites of the eggs. Very reliable thing

that you can use whose 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 canning. All these things make it kind of this household, bright, crisp neutral. People use it for pickled eggs, Jimmy churry, raspberry vinaigrette, these types of things. The next you look at are going to get into

more flavors that are going to be usable. And the first one we're going to look at is apple cider vinegar and we'll talk more about that we come back.

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 cide or 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 vom Fass in Ventura and in San Diego and the like. And they were friends of our friend 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. 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 suke white 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 new mommy ness, a very a savoriness to it, but it is just lovely hot or 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 nuttiness 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 ingredy it 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. So stick around. Much more to come.

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 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 of time. But I'll do that when when I'm doing a dish and vegetables and I'm like there's just something lacking, I'll take a fortified wine like Lile Blanc and that I use for mixing a cocktail or something, and I'll 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 fair and a pinot. 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 jarring 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 Noah 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 app 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 usually 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 kinds 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. All Right, we'll wrap this up vinegars when we come back, So go know where you've been listening to the fore Report. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty two to five pm on Saturday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio appum chatting with you on look At, I said, chatting.

I'm comfortable with who I am chatting with you on a Saturday, as we are one to do on the fore Report, hanging out and celebrating food in every way 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 flavors, 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 bolsamic 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 uh. And those things aren't made for eating, but you can process us 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 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, malty, rich and very flavor or fall 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 butter cream, add tang 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 braize 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 dullness of a dish. And you could have done everything else right. The fatten 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 marinate overnight in buttermilk because 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 at KFIAM 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. So I hope that that helps and gets you focused on trying something new if you are not comfortable with it, and there is much more to come, so go nowhere.