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

this video is sponsored by pronamel i've been on a very interesting journey over the last two months diving deep into the world of homemade vinegars and you know i'm obsessed with all things fermentation and what i've realized is that every time i try one of these new fermentation projects well it ends up being so much better than the store-bought stuff plus you save a ton of money which is awesome and vinegar is something that's been on my radar for a while and i just figured why not homemade vinegar it can't be that hard right well we'll see that's the point of today's video i'm gonna be diving deep into all things vinegar we're gonna talk about the science i'm gonna show you all the mistakes that i made over the last few months and also an epiphany that i had that really led to a breakthrough in my homemade vinegar making and then of course once we have all these delicious vinegars well they open up a pretty crazy world of culinary opportunity so i'm gonna show you my favorite ways that i've been putting these vinegars to use in the kitchen [Music] so before we get into making vinegar what we have to understand what vinegar is i'm sure you've heard of it most of you have probably used 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 around four to six percent of vinegar is actually acidic acid and then the last part of vinegar is the flavoring coming from whatever you actually use to make the vinegar itself now vinegar is a very unique fermentation process because it's actually a two-stepper it's using two different fermentation processes to make the final product part one is alcohol fermentation so you first need alcohol and to get alcohol well you need some type of product that has sugar in it naturally occurring sugars and then you have wild yeast that are feeding off of those sugars and as the yeast feed off those sugars the byproduct from that process is alcohol so that is step one of the vinegar process is first we need an alcohol so let's talk about part two of the fermentation process which is the acidic fermentation taking alcohol and converting 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 that glass of red wine into a cup you've taken your wine out of the safety of its bottle which it was really enjoying it was aging really nicely and now you've exposed it to the entire environment and in that environment well you've got bacteria but specifically a certain bacteria called acetobacter is really going to enjoy feeding off that alcohol but it needs one other thing which is oxygen without that oxygen the acetobacter can't survive and it can't thrive and you won't get vinegar so when you have your wine exposed to all that oxygen that's when the acetobacter 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 that wine out long enough exposed to oxygen well thyme and acetobacter is going to take over and eventually turn that wine into red wine vinegar now it's very important to note that the acetobacter will only thrive in a specific range of alcohol around six to twelve percent alcohol by volume so that's why so many of the vinegar products that you see that are popular on the shelves that you probably use in your cooking well they come from alcohol products that have that six to twelve percent range of alcohol because the acetobacter it's not surviving under six percent and it's not surviving over twelve percent so any of these alcohols if you leave exposed to oxygen they will turn into some delicious vinegar that you can then use in your cooking now there are so many different products you can make vinegar from the options are pretty much endless but today i'm going to be focusing my efforts solely on fruit because fruit is available to everyone there's naturally occurring sugars in fruits so you have everything there you don't need to add anything it's just one ingredient whatever fruit you want and that's the best part you can use whatever fruit you want and that's the goal of today to really try a bunch of different fruits because you go to the store and you can only get so many vinegars but i really wanted to test out a whole variety of fruits to see what gives me the best final vinegar product for my cooking so i ended up going to the farmer's market and getting a bunch of fruit that was in season because it was important to get fruit that was fresh and also peak of the season fruit that was full of sugar and i came back to the studio and the first thing i did was sanitize the glass jars that i was using which is important for any fermentation process you always want to be as clean as possible the next step was washing all the fruit and then i started preparing it for the jars so i cut a bunch of the fruit up into different pieces if the fruit was smaller like blueberries i placed a bunch of them in the jar and mashed them a little bit to really break it down and expose those sugars and the only fruit that i use that wasn't fresh which is very important to note were raisins so i filled those up about a quarter of the way full and once everything was prepared all of my fruit was in the jars i topped everything off with water and again you need to expose everything to oxygen to ultimately get the vinegar so what i did was i topped them off with a coffee filter which will keep out all of the dust all the things you don't want in there but it will allow the oxygen to flow through but you can also just use a towel over top of your jars now here's where things get interesting so to get vinegar takes around 30 to 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's going as planned but for me i had to move my entire fermentation process to my house because i was in the process of moving and there might have been a few days there where i wasn't stirring everything up so what happened was i was starting to develop a little bit of mold on top of a few of the fruits and now a little bit of white mold doesn't mean you have to start over the entire process it can be removed and the process can continue but my mold got a little out of control with a few of the fruits it was just hard to stay ahead every time i would remove some more mold would form and i was just having a lot of issues to the point where i was pretty bummed out and i just felt like all right this is a fail i've gotta try something new i gotta start over and then i realized that the one jar with raisins in it the one dried fruit well that was doing just great there was no mold forming there i saw a lot of bubbles it smelled really nice it started to smell like vinegar so i just let that one go i kept stirring it every day and after around 20 days it started tasting like vinegar and really good vinegar then at that point i strained it off i felt like the raisins had done their job let it go for another 10 days and after 30 days i had an incredible raisin vinegar like i'm telling you this stuff was amazing i was throwing in stir fries and i was loving this product and one of the best parts about vinegars is once you jar them once they're turned into vinegar well they age just like wine and they turn into better aged vinegar but the raisin vinegar success had me thinking that maybe dried fruit was the way to go maybe i need to start over this entire project with dried fruit and that's exactly what i did so what i did was i went all in on the dried fruit i kind of used it also as an excuse to just get a bunch of dry fruit which are pretty much nature's fruit snacks and i got a wide variety of dried fruit again to really test out the product and see what makes the best vinegars so i started over and i put the dried fruit in each of the jars filling it up about a third of the way depending on the size of the fruit and i topped them with water covered them up and let them go to work see if the dried fruit will convert better into alcohol and then into vinegar and after around five days i had some incredible bubbly product all the glasses were now bubbling away so i was getting pretty excited they were off to a really good start and after around 10 days i could really smell the alcohol coming off the jars and also i tasted it and i could taste a bit of that fruit alcohol forming which was another good sign the alcohol process was underway so i just kept stirring it kept staying on top of it and after around 20 days most of the fruits were starting to convert into vinegar which was very exciting when i tasted it they all had a unique vinegar flavor but i was still tasting a little bit of the residual alcohol so what i did was i strained off all of the fruit because at that point it really had done its job and then i just let those sit there for another 10 days and around day 30 they were all tasting like delicious fruit vinegar i barely had any mold issues maybe a little here or there if a tiny bit of white mold showed up i would just scoop it out and continue on so after around 30 to 35 days i was really happy with the flavors of the vinegar so i cap them off and again that is the best part about vinegar once they're capped off they're aging in these bottles and what i've noticed is the raisin vinegar that's been sitting in this bottle for around 40 days this is just continuing to get better compared to these fresh vinegars like this strawberry vinegar this has been sitting in here for around 10 days still tastes like good vinegar but i'm sure it's going to age very well like a wine you know on prom cooks i'm a huge proponent of fermented foods i make them all the time i consume them all the time i try to put out as much education on this channel as possible on how to make them at home because they unlock unique flavors in your food and also they unlock key nutrients that are important for your health that you can't get from consuming raw foods but it's also important to remember that a lot of these fermented foods especially the ones that fall under the acidic fermentation like kombucha that i make all the time and vinegar which this video is all about do have the potential to weaken the enamel of your teeth tooth enamel is the visible outermost covering your teeth which protects the inner sensitive layers of your teeth and having healthy enamel is also the key to having white teeth so when we eat a ton of acidic food the acids can weaken or damage your enamel leaving your teeth vulnerable to higher sensitivity which of course is no fun and discoloring which doesn't look good now i drink a lot of kombucha i eat a lot of citrus and i use vinegar all the time in my cooking because you know very well without acidity our food's just a little boring it really brightens it up but it is 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 so much acidic foods and pronamil can help really strengthen your enamel and also protect it from the long-term effects of tooth erosion so it's all about finding a balance that makes sense and for me i eat a ton of acidic foods so it's important to me that i take the proper precautions to protect my tea so i can continue to eat these foods so that's something to keep in mind especially as we get into this next part of the video which is all 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 to experiment with these vinegars because of the late breakthrough with the dried fruit but in general i am very impressed once i got the dried fruit technique down it wasn't hard to do and the product is amazing so happy to have these in my pantry i'm sure you'll see them come up a lot in my future videos and one that i have been experimenting with a lot that's been aging really nicely is the raisin vinegar which is really just a nice smooth vinegar it's not too sweet i've been throwing this in everything specifically a lot of stir fries to replace you know a rice vinegar when i want some acidity in the dish and recently i've been making this patsy recipe that i really like that starts off 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 got some oil in a pan on high heat and started stir-frying some onions and some pepper until they start to get some nice color then i push those to the side add a little more oil and fry up a few eggs once the eggs are fried up nicely i chopped them up mix them in with the dish then i added some fresh corn that was cut off the cob because it's super in season and i like the crunch it adds and then my patsy use style noodles which are a flat rice noodle but you can use any type of rice noodle for this and the key is adding that sauce right after you add the noodles because those noodles are gonna soak up that sauce and then finally i hit it with some fresh basil if you have thai basil that would be a huge bonus and just mix that around until it's wilted and served now of course you can use any of these vinegars to make a delicious vinaigrette but the best part is now we've got all of this built in flavor so i'm going to make a strawberry vinaigrette but i don't have to blend up strawberries the strawberry flavor is already in here and this strawberry vinegar is fantastic and i have a very good feeling it's going to age well it's already off to a great start so to make this vinaigrette i'm going to start off with half a cup of the strawberry vinegar one spoon full of mustard and then i grated in one clove of garlic hit it with a little bit of salt and pepper and then at this point i decided yeah i'll add a little extra sweetness so i added about two teaspoons of honey and then i took a whisk and mixed that up and started to emulsify in my oil and the ratios are completely up to you it's your vinaigrette i'm going about one-to-one oil to vinegar so i slowly emulsified in around a half cup of oil and i had my finished beautiful strawberry vinaigrette [Music] now this blueberry vinegar is definitely one of my favorites and it was really easy to make all of the small dried fruit like the dried blueberries and the dried raisins they were just really simple vinegars to make so that's a nice key tip if you want to start with something easy start with smaller dried fruit and this is pretty mild overall it's not as acidic as the other ones and it has a really nice sweetness so the first thing that came to my mind is making a shrub which is a non-alcoholic style drink made with vinegar and all you have to do is add some soda water to a cup hit it with your vinegar and then i added a little bit of basil as well for an extra layer of aroma and at this point you could add a simple syrup if you wanted a little extra sweet but i liked it with just the blueberry vinegar and that's just a great non-alcoholic style drink and also a great way to get the raw vinegar in your body to get the health benefits of the pure vinegar now this mango vinegar was really interesting super acidic has a great punch really good mango flavor and also the thickest the mangoes really thickened it up and the first thing i thought about when i got the finished product was some type of mango barbecue sauce so for this barbecue sauce i'm gonna cook down some onions some carrot and some garlic in oil because i was adding mango to the barbecue sauce i was really pushing the caribbean flavors so i added one habanero cut up without the seeds and i cooked that down for another few minutes until they're super soft and they're nice and caramelized then i added one cup of crushed tomatoes a third of a cup of molasses a third of a cup of soy sauce and then one cup of that mango vinegar and then i hit it with a bunch of salt and you can add a little water if you want to thin this out a bit because it will thicken once we blend it up and i let that simmer for about 10 minutes making sure to stir it and once that was finished i poured it into a food processor and blended it up and now that we have our barbecue sauce well we need some wings and luckily i had some baked wings coming fresh out of the oven so i tossed those wings in that barbecue sauce and hit them with a little bit of green onion and finally the last recipe i'm going to show you is using apple cider vinegar which for me felt like the least impressive vinegar and i don't know maybe that's just because i've been using apple cider vinegar pretty much my whole cooking career and it's good it came out nice i think over time it's getting better i'm starting to taste um some better flavor notes in this with the aging but compared to these other ones i don't know just not as fun but having said that i'm gonna show you just a great morning tonic or tea just a great way to start your day off in a really clean way to almost clear out your system so take a cup or a mug add a little bit of lemon juice a little bit of honey and then some apple cider vinegar pour over some boiling water and boom you've got your tea so simple but such an incredible way to start off your morning trust me on that and that's all the recipes i'm going to show you but there were other vinegars like this peach vinegar that was incredible one of my favorites as well but what a fun experiment that was i learned so much hopefully you're inspired to try this at home it really is simple once i got the dried fruit everything was rolling smoothly and now i mean i've got all of these vinegars to have fun with in the kitchen which is very exciting stuff and the beauty of fermentation and if you like this fermentation project and you're on a roll and you want some more well here you go i've got more fermentation for you right here so that's it i'll see you in the next video [Music] this video was sponsored by pronomo thanks for watching

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 1,026,411

Keywords: homemade vinegar, how to make vinegar, how to make apple cider vinegar, apple cider vinegar recipe, vinegar fermenation, fermenation, fermenation projects, how to ferment, acetic acid, kombucha, peach vinegar, strawberry vinegar, raisin vinegar, blueberry vinegar, beginners fermentation, new, fruit vinegars, vinegars, vinegar from scratch, strawberry vinaigrette, mike greenfield, mike g, pro home cooks, pro home cookung

Id: V9nfVu9zGxk

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020