If you are an avid home chef, you already know that vinegar is a pantry powerhouse with limitless uses. Working vinegar into your culinary toolkit is an excellent way to add a punch of flavor and personality to a host of dishes, especially salad dressings, marinades, chutneys, sauces and soups. At the same time, vinegar may be good for your health, possibly helping to control blood sugar and lower cholesterol. Indeed, there are no reasons not to keep vinegar in your culinary toolkit.
What Is Vinegar?
The word “vinegar” is derived from the French phrase “vin aigre,” meaning sour wine. It is a highly acidic cooking liquid that has been used for centuries to flavor, pickle and preserve.
Vinegar is a cooking liquid and flavoring agent with a tangy, sour taste which is generally made from grapes, grains, sugar or spirits. It gets its flavor profile from its high concentration of acetic acid, a solution obtained by fermenting alcohol or sugars. It is used to flavor dishes — often to add a brightness or a “punchy” flavor to whatever you are making — and as a preserving and pickling agent to keep foods fresh.
The Science of Vinegar as a Cooking Agent
What does vinegar do as a cooking agent? First and foremost, it is used to flavor. Depending on the variety, vinegar can bring a sour, tangy, sweet, mild, malty, woody or even buttery flavor to your dish. It can also be used to color or discolor foods. Because of its unique ability to break down proteins, vinegar is also used as a marinade to help tenderize meats and veggies. It is also used to “quick pickle” veggies because it helps to speed up fermentation and creates good bacteria that makes food last longer.
The Basics of Cooking with Vinegar
- Know Your Types — As previously mentioned, vinegar comes in many varieties, each of which has its own unique flavor profile. Try them plain or as a base for flavored vinegars to dress up all sorts of foods. The most popular types of vinegar to keep in your pantry include:
- Balsamic. The crème de la crème of vinegars, balsamic vinegar is the cherry-colored liquid often seen drizzled across summer veggies. It is a grape-based vinegar which is known for its sweet, bold, decadent and rich flavor profile. Try our RAPTURE Balsamic Vinegar — a lovingly crafted zinfandel vinegar made from California grapes and Triple Crown blackberries — to see what this kind of vinegar is all about.
FAQs
Depending on the variety, vinegar can bring a sour, tangy, sweet, mild, malty, woody or even buttery flavor to your dish. It can also be used to color or discolor foods. Because of its unique ability to break down proteins, vinegar is also used as a marinade to help tenderize meats and veggies.
What balances out vinegar in cooking? ›
For more pronounced sour balance issues, try honey, sugar, or cream and if all that fails a pinch of bicarbonate of soda will bring some alkaline to the dish to neutralise the acidity.
Is Allen's cleaning vinegar safe to eat? ›
You should absolutely never cook with or consume cleaning vinegar. Most cleaning vinegar has a warning label on the packaging. Unlike cooking vinegar, it may not be tested for impurities that can be dangerous to the human body.
Which vinegar is best for cooking meat? ›
Balsamic vinegar is a good marinade for red meats because it helps to tenderize them. The acid in the vinegar helps to break down some of the protein and fat in the beef, which makes it softer. The balsamic vinegar also adds a sweet flavor while tenderizing, without having to add any sugar.
Which vinegar is not used for cooking? ›
It is made by distilling vinegar with steam heat, which kills all nutrients and essentially boils the liquid down to pure acetic acid. For this reason, you really do not want to use distilled white vinegar for most cooking tasks.
Which is better to cook with white vinegar or apple cider vinegar? ›
White Vinegar for Cooking
White vinegar is an extremely versatile ingredient that can be used more often than apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, and balsamic vinegar. This is because it has a neutral flavor and scent profile that doesn't interfere with other ingredients.
Is there a difference between vinegar and cooking vinegar? ›
Acetic Acid Makes the Difference in Vinegar for Cleaning
The distilled white vinegar in the food aisle is 95 percent water and 5 percent acetic acid. In contrast, cleaning vinegar is 94 percent water and 6 percent acetic acid. While a 1 percent difference doesn't seem like a big deal, it actually is.
What happens if you put too much vinegar in food? ›
If too much vinegar is added to a recipe, it can make the dish overly sour and unbalanced in flavor. This can also make the texture of the dish unappetizing.
How do you dilute vinegar for cooking? ›
Food grade vinegars of all kinds, whether white, apple cider, balsamic or wine, are almost always standardized to 5% acidity. What proportion of vinegar to water I should use for dilution? In other words, 0.0000044 parts ACV per 1 part water.
What cancels out vinegar? ›
Mixing in a sprinkle of common alkaline ingredients, like baking soda or baking powder, can often salvage a dish. If this still hasn't done the trick, adding neutral flavors, like sour cream or yogurt, can also help balance out the flavors.
Being corrosive, it can cause ulcerative injury to the oropharynx and oesophagus and upset the stomach with resulting nausea and vomiting. This study presents 11 cases of paediatric patients (five boys and six girls, aged between 11 and 89 months) with oesophageal strictures who drank white vinegar by accident.
Which vinegar kills germs? ›
Acetic acid (a.k.a. white vinegar) can act as a disinfectant that can destroy some bacteria and viruses. Studies confirming vinegar's antibacterial properties: Household natural sanitizers like lemon juice and vinegar reduced the number of pathogens to undetectable levels.
Should you clean your house with vinegar? ›
Vinegar isn't only useful for cooking, though. It also makes a great cleaner and disinfectant because it's made from acetic acid. Acetic acid is a colorless organic compound that gives vinegar its sour taste and pungent smell. It's also an ingredient in some store-bought household cleaners.
What are the benefits of cooking with white vinegar? ›
– And add it to sauces and salads to boost your vitamin and mineral intake. Furthermore, vinegar can lower your cholesterol, stabilize your blood sugar levels, and much, much more! Cooking with vinegar also boosts your immunity, meaning you won't get sick with colds and flu as often.
What are the benefits of adding vinegar? ›
Vinegar is good for lowering blood glucose levels, helping with weight loss and boosting skin health. It also has antibacterial properties. Today, more and more people are discovering its health benefits and using it as a go-to remedy for everything from minor ailments to chronic diseases.
Does vinegar make food taste better? ›
Vinegar. Just a splash of it at the end of cooking ---not just in stews, but in most dishes-- adds an immediate wow factor, enlivening the meal and making all the flavors sing.
Why add vinegar at end of cooking? ›
Vinegar can add depth of flavour to soups, sauces, and stews. Especially great for tomato-based recipes, you can add a couple of tablespoons of vinegar towards the end of the cooking process to amplify the flavours of your other ingredients.
