Why I started making my own vinegars from scratch...

This video is sponsored by pronamel. I have been on a very interesting journey over the last two months diving deep into the world of homemade

vinegars

and you know I am obsessed with everything related to fermentation and what I have realized is that every time I try one of these new fermentation projects, it ends up being much better than store bought products, plus it saves a ton of money which is amazing and vinegar is something that has been on my radar for a while and I thought why not make it at home. Vinegar, it can't be that difficult, well, we'll see, that's the goal of today's video.

I'm going to delve into everything related to vinegar. We will talk about science. I'll show you all the mistakes I made. done in the last few months and also an epiphany I had that really led to a breakthrough in my homemade vinegar

making

and then of course once we have all these delicious

vinegars

it opens up a pretty crazy world of culinary opportunities, so I'm I'm going to show you my favorite ways that I've been using these vinegars in cooking, so before we start

making

vinegar, we need to understand what vinegar is. I'm sure you've heard of it, most of you have probably used it. you use it in your cooking because it adds acidity, but it's actually not all acidity, it's three different elements, it's mostly made up of water and only about four to six percent of the vinegar is actually acidic acid and then the last part of the vinegar It is the flavoring that comes from whatever it is. you actually use it to make vinegar, now vinegar is a unique fermentation process because it's actually a two step process, it uses two different fermentation processes to make the final product.

The first part is fermentation with alcohol, so you need alcohol first and to get it right. You need some type of product that contains sugar, natural sugars, and then you have wild yeast that feeds on those sugars, and as the yeast feeds on those sugars, the byproduct of that process is alcohol, so that's the first step of the vinegar process. First we need an alcohol, so let's talk about the second part of the fermentation process, which is acid fermentation which takes the alcohol and turns it into the acidic acids that make up vinegar, so let's take a glass of red wine as a great example once you pour it. glass of red wine in a glass, you've taken the wine out of the safety of its bottle, which it was really enjoying, it was aging very well and now you've exposed it to the whole environment and in that environment, well, you have bacteria, but specifically a a certain bacteria called acetobacter will really enjoy feeding on that alcohol, but it needs something else which is oxygen, without that oxygen the acetobacter can't survive or thrive and it won't get vinegar, so when you have your wine exposed to all that oxygen, that's when The acetobacteria can start to thrive and take over and convert the alcohol into acetic acid, which is step two of the fermentation process, so if you leave the wine exposed long enough to oxygen, well, thyme and acetobacter will take over and it will eventually turn that wine into red wine vinegar.

Now it's very important to note that acetobacter will only thrive in a specific alcohol range of between six and twelve percent alcohol by volume, which is why many of the vinegar products that you see that are popular on the shelves and that you probably use in your cooking, they come from alcohol products that have that six to twelve percent alcohol range because acetobacter doesn't survive below six percent and it doesn't survive above twelve percent, so any of these alcohols , if you leave them exposed to oxygen, they will become a delicious vinegar that you can then use in your cooking.

Now there are so many different products you can make vinegar with. The options are practically endless, but today I'm going to be. Focusing my efforts solely on fruit because fruit is available to everyone. There are natural sugars in fruits so you have everything there, you don't need to add anything, it's just one ingredient, any fruit you want and that's the best part, you can use any fruit. I want to, and that's the goal today, to try a bunch of different fruits because you go to the store and you can only get a limited amount of vinegars, but I really wanted to try a wide variety of fruits to see which one gives me the best final vinegar. product for my kitchen so I ended up going to the farmers market and buying a bunch of seasonal fruit because it was important to get fresh fruit and also peak season fruit that was full of sugar and I went back into the studio and the first thing I did was Sanitizing the glass jars I was using, which is important for any fermentation process, you always want to be as clean as possible, the next step was to wash all the fruit and then I

started

preparing it for the jars. so I cut a bunch of fruit into different pieces, if the fruit was smaller like blueberries, I put a bunch of them in the jar and mashed them up a little bit to break them down and expose those sugars and the only fruit I use. that was not fresh, which is very important to note, they were raisins, so I filled them about a quarter full and once everything was prepared, all my fruit was in the jars, I topped everything off with water and again you have to expose everything to oxygen to finally get the vinegar so what I did was top them off with a coffee filter which will keep out all the dust and all the stuff you don't want in there but will allow the oxygen to flow through but you can also use a towel over the jars.

This is where things get interesting. Getting vinegar takes between 30 and 60 days, so after a few days you should start to see some bubbles when you look in the glasses, which is a good sign. that the alcohol fermentation process is taking place because as the yeast eats the sugar, one of the byproducts is carbon dioxide, so seeing those bubbles is a great sign that everything is going according to plan, but in my case I had to move my entire fermentation process into my house because I was in the process of moving and there may have been some days where I wasn't stirring everything, so what happened was I was starting to develop a little bit of mold on top of some of the fruits and now a little A little white mold doesn't mean you have to start the whole process over, it can be removed and the process can continue, but my mold got a little out of control with some of the fruits, it was difficult to stay ahead every time I would remove more mold from forming and I was having a lot of problems to the point where I was pretty discouraged and I felt like okay, this was a failure.

I have to try something new. I have to start again and then I realized that the jar with raisins and dried fruit worked very well, no mold was forming there, I saw a lot of bubbles, it smelled very good, it

started

to smell like vinegar, so I let it go and I followed him. I stirred it every day and after about 20 days it started to taste like vinegar and really good vinegar, then at that point I drained it and felt like the raisins had done their job. I let it sit for another 10 days and after 30 days it tasted amazing.

Raisin vinegar like I'm telling you, this was amazing. I was tossing stir-fries and I loved this product and one of the best parts about vinegars is that once you shake them, once they turn into vinegar, they age like wine. and they make better aged vinegar, but the success of raisin vinegar made me think that maybe dried fruits were the way to go, maybe I needed to start this whole project with dried fruits again and that's exactly what I did, so what I did was go all out. As for dried fruits, I also used them as an excuse to buy a bunch of dried fruits, which are pretty much nature's fruit snacks, and I bought a wide variety of dried fruits again to really try the product and see what makes better vinegars, so I started again and put the dried fruits in each of the jars, filling them about a third depending on the size of the fruit and covered them with water, covered them and let them work to see if the dried fruit will convert better to alcohol and then vinegar and after about five days I had an incredibly bubbly product.

All the glasses were bubbling so I got really excited because they were off to a really good start and after about 10 days. I could really smell the alcohol coming out of the jars and I tasted it too and could taste a little bit of that fruit alcohol forming which was another good sign that the alcohol process was underway so I kept stirring it stayed on top and after 20 days, most of the fruits started to turn into vinegar, which was very exciting when I tried them. They all had a unique vinegar flavor, but I was still tasting a bit of the residual alcohol, so what I did was strain everything. fruit because at that point it had really done its job and then I let them sit there for another 10 days and around day 30 they all tasted like delicious fruit vinegar.

I barely had any mold problems, maybe a little here or there if a little bit of white mold appeared, I just took it out and moved on, so after about 30 to 35 days I was very happy with the flavors of the vinegar, so I I covered it and again, that's the best part about the vinegar once they are. To top it off, they are aging in these bottles and what I have noticed is that the raisin vinegar that has been in this bottle for about 40 days continues to improve compared to these fresh vinegars like this strawberry vinegar that it has been in.

Here for about 10 days it still tastes like good vinegar, but I'm sure it will age very well like a wine. You know, at the prom cooks. I am a big proponent of fermented foods. I prepare them all the time. I consume them all the time. I try to offer as much education as possible on this channel about how to make them at home because they unlock unique flavors in your food and also unlock key nutrients that are important for your health that you can't get from eating raw foods. but it's also important to remember that many of these fermented foods, especially those that fall under acidic fermentation like the kombucha I make all the time and the vinegar this video is about, have the potential to weaken tooth enamel.

Enamel is the outermost visible layer that covers the teeth and protects the sensitive inner layers of the teeth. Having healthy enamel is also the key to having white teeth, so when we eat a ton of acidic foods, the acids can weaken or damage the enamel, leaving our teeth vulnerable. to a higher sensitivity, which of course is not fun and discoloration, which does not look good now I drink a lot of kombucha, eat a lot of citrus fruits and use vinegar all the time in my kitchen because you know very well that without acidity our food is just a bit boring, it really brightens it up, but it's important for me to protect my teeth, protect my enamel from eroding over time so I can continue to eat these acidic foods and one of the best ways to create that long-term protection is to brush. your teeth with pronamel, which is a toothpaste that I use daily because I eat a lot of acidic foods, and pronamil can really help strengthen the enamel and also protect it from the long-term effects of tooth erosion, so it's all about to find a balance that makes sense. and for me I eat a lot of acidic foods, so it's important for me to take the proper precautions to protect my tea so I can continue eating these foods, so that's something to keep in mind, especially as we move into the next part from the video about incorporating more vinegar into the food you're making to be honest, I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to experiment with these vinegars due to the late development with nuts, but overall I am very impressed once I I learned the nut technique, it wasn't hard to make and the product is amazing so I'm happy to have them in my pantry.

I'm sure you'll see them show up a lot in my future videos and one. I've been experimenting with a lot of things that have been aging very well: raisin vinegar, which is actually a nice mild vinegar, is not too sweet. I've been pouring this into everything, specifically a lot of stir-fries to replace, you know, a rice vinegar. when I want a little sourness in the dish and recently I have been making this patsy recipe that I really like and it starts with two tablespoons of soy sauce one tablespoon of mirin one teaspoon of sesame oil one tablespoon of chili paste and then three tablespoons of raisin vinegar I put a little oil in a frying pan over high heat and started sautéing some onions and a little pepper until they started to get a nice color, then I set them aside and added a little more oil and I fried some eggs once the eggs are deep fried I cut them up I mixed them into the dish and then I added some fresh corn cut off the cob because it's great in season and I like the crunch it adds and then my patsy uses noodlesstyle that are flat rice noodles, but you can use any type of rice noodles for this and the key is to add that sauce right after you add the noodles because those noodles will absorb that sauce and finally I add them with some fresh basil if you have Thai basil.

That would be a big plus and just mix everything together until softened and serve. Now, of course, you can use any of these vinegars to make a delicious vinaigrette, but the best part is that now we have all this flavor built in, so I'm going to make a strawberry vinaigrette, but I don't have to mix in strawberries, the flavor of strawberry is here and this strawberry vinegar is fantastic and I have a very good feeling that it will age well, it's already off to a great start so To make this vinaigrette I'm going to start with half a cup of strawberry vinegar, a tablespoon full of mustard and then I grated a clove of garlic, put a little salt and pepper on it and then at this point I decided that yes it would add a little more sweetness so I added about two teaspoons of honey and then I took a whisk and mixed it and I started to emulsify. my oil and the proportions are completely up to you, it's your vinaigrette.

I'm going to use oil and vinegar one at a time so I slowly emulsified in about half a cup of oil and I had my beautiful strawberry vinaigrette finished, now this blueberry vinegar is definitely one of my favorites and it was very easy to make all the small dried fruits , like dried cranberries and dried raisins, were very simple vinegars to make, so it's a good key tip if you want to start with something easy. smaller dried fruit and overall it's pretty mild, it's not as acidic as the others and it has a really nice sweetness to it, so the first thing that came to mind was to make a shrub which is a non-alcoholic drink made with vinegar and everything . what you do is add some sparkling water to a cup, drizzle it with vinegar and then I also added some basil to give it an extra layer of aroma and at this point you can add a simple syrup if you would like a little more. sweet, but I liked it alone with cranberry vinegar and it is a great non-alcoholic drink and also a great way to introduce raw vinegar to your body to get the health benefits of pure vinegar.

Now, this mango vinegar was really interesting. The acid has a great flavor, very good mango flavor and also the thicker mangoes really thickened it up and the first thing I thought of when I got the finished product was some kind of mango barbecue sauce so for this barbecue sauce I'm going to cook it. some onions, some carrot and some garlic in oil because I was adding mango to the barbecue sauce. I was really boosting the Caribbean flavors so I added a seeded habanero and cooked it for a few more minutes until super soft. and they are delicious and caramelized, then I added a cup of crushed tomatoes, a third of a cup of molasses, a third of a cup of soy sauce and then a cup of mango vinegar and then I added it with a bunch of salt and You can add a little water if you want to thin this out a little because it will thicken once we mix it and I let it simmer for about 10 minutes making sure to stir it and once it was done I poured it into a food processor and blended it and now that we have our barbecue sauce, we need some wings and luckily I had some wings baked right out of the oven, so I tossed them in that barbecue sauce and hit them with some green onion and finally the last recipe I'm going to show you is using apple cider vinegar, which for me was the least impressive vinegar and I don't know, maybe it's just because I've been using apple cider vinegar for almost my entire culinary career and it's Well, it turned out well, I think over time it's getting better.

I'm starting to taste some better flavor notes in this with aging, but compared to these others, I don't know, it's just not as fun, but having said that, I'll show you a great morning tonic or tea, a great way to start your day in a really clean way to almost cleanse your system, so grab a cup or a mug, add a little bit of lemon juice, a little bit of honey and then pour some apple cider vinegar over some boiling water and boom you have your tea so simple but such an amazing way to start your morning trust me and those are all the recipes I will show you but there were others. vinegars like this peach vinegar which was amazing, one of my favorites too, but what a fun experiment, I learned a lot.

I hope you are inspired to try this at home. It's simple really, once I got the dried fruits everything ran smoothly and now I mean I have all these vinegars to have fun with in the kitchen which is a very exciting thing and the beauty of fermentation and if you like this project fermentation and you're on a roll and you want some more, here you go Wow, I've got more fermentation for you right here, so that's it. See you in the next video. This video was sponsored by pronomo, thanks for watching.