21 Oct 2009
Mother of Vinegar
Donna bottling her homemade vinegar
My friend Donna Morris lives in Paris; she eats a lot of salad with vinaigrette dressing. So she’s started making her own vinegar. I watched her last night as she strained her latest batch of red wine vinegar and bottled it.
Donna fished out the “mother of vinegar,” something I knew nothing about. It’s akin, I guess, to sour dough starter. She got hers from her former mother-in-law in Switzerland. It’s a round fleshy thing, looking a bit like liver,
Her mother of vinegar
that stays in the vinegar crock. Donna went down to Emmaus, something like a Goodwill store in the states, and searched out an old pottery crock. She tossed in the mother and added a bottle of red wine.
She dumps any leftover wine into the crock as well, and a few months later, she has vinegar. Last year she gave homemade vinegar to friends as gifts.
Weirdly, the mother of vinegar grows over the years. Donna says she started with a small piece, but now has two slabs of it – and she’s been passing along pieces of her mother of vinegar to other people.
Donna's vinegar crock
I, who am bereft of homemaking skills, really admire those who can create something like homemade vinegar and make it look so easy. Years ago my former mother-in-law gave me a cutting from a beefsteak begonia, a very special plant that had been handed on from woman to woman for years. “Take good care of it,” she cautioned me. It was dry and dead within a year.
Wow, I had no idea and I think of myself as a Foodie! I guess I need to go to Paris to get a personal lesson and a bit of “mother” from Donna!
Frank Finamore
October 21st, 2009 at 10:16 pmpermalink
Um, it looks a little more like Ugly Cousin Nobody Every Wants to Hang With at a Family Reunion Vinegar than Mother of Vinegar.
And I have nothing but admiration for someone who can work “bereft” into a sentence, being without that particular skill myself . . .
Woody Hinkle
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:17 pmpermalink
Good point, Woody. It’s definitely Ugly Cousin. And feels even nastier than it looks.
Frank, yes, a trip to Paris to pick up mother is definitely a worthwhile idea.
Sheila Campbell
October 23rd, 2009 at 7:34 ampermalink
The starters are available at most beer and wind supply stores, if you can’t find a friend doing this. An excellent website is on the Sunset magazine site, search for Vinegar. Our pottery makes and sells crecks. Paula Wolfert also wrote an excellent article with some recipes in Food and Wine Magazine last October.
Put a tablespoon or so in almost everything you cook. It kicks up the flavor something amazing.
Tom Wirt
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:00 pmpermalink
Wow, I had no idea that vinegar needed a “starter”. I’m really loving your site. Very crisp, clean design, and great content. Thanks!
Mary Ann
http://www.enchanted-traveler.com
@enchantedtravel
Mary Ann G.
October 24th, 2009 at 10:26 pmpermalink