@ForkReporter- Technique of the Week: Vinegars

It all comes down to balancing ingredients. Neil has some great tips and some answers to your Talkback questions.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're going to start with Technique of the Week, and
I don't know that we've done this. If we have,
it's been a long time. I'm sure we've touched on
vinegar before, but I want to get into vinegar a
little more of a deep dive. 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

(00:20):
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

(00:44):
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

(01:06):
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

(01:28):
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

(01:51):
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

(02:13):
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

(02:34):
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,

(02:55):
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,

(03:17):
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

(03:41):
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.

(04:04):
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

(04:27):
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,

(04:49):
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

(05:09):
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

(05:30):
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

(05:53):
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

(06:16):
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,

(06:40):
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

(07:02):
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

(07:25):
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

(07:48):
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

(08:10):
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

(08:34):
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

(08:59):
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.

(09:23):
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

(09:45):
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.

(10:09):
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

(10:30):
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

(10:53):
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

(11:15):
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,

(11:35):
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,

(11:57):
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

(12:20):
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

(12:44):
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

(13:06):
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

(13:26):
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,

(13:48):
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

(14:10):
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.

(14:31):
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,

(14:52):
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.

(15:13):
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

(15:36):
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.

(15:57):
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,

(16:18):
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

(16:40):
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,

(17:05):
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

(17:29):
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

(17:51):
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,

(18:13):
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

(18:36):
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

(19:01):
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

(19:22):
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

(19:45):
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

(20:09):
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

(20:31):
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.

(20:56):
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

(21:16):
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,

(21:38):
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

(22:02):
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

(22:23):
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

(22:44):
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,

(23:06):
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

(23:28):
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

(23:50):
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

(24:14):
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.

(24:37):
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

(24:58):
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

(25:20):
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,

(25:45):
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

(26:09):
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,

(26:33):
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

(26:55):
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

(27:19):
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

(27:42):
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

(28:04):
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.

(28:26):
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

(28:48):
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

(29:11):
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

(29:32):
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

(29:55):
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

(30:20):
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

(30:41):
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,

(31:02):
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

(31:26):
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

(31:49):
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

(32:10):
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

(32:32):
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

(32:55):
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

(33:18):
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,

(33:41):
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

(34:02):
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,

(34:28):
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

(34:49):
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

(35:12):
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,

(35:33):
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?

(35:56):
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

(36:21):
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

(36:44):
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

(37:06):
specific to you. Bespoke cooking in your own kitchen,