Mother's Children Make (And Sell) Herb Vinegars!

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BEST CHOICES

I'd like to tell you about some herbs that are really good in herb vinegars. Dill tastes very good on salads, so it's especially nice in herb vinegars.

Dill's been used in cooking since ancient times. (Its name comes from the Norse word "dilla", which means "to lull".) Colonial Americans chewed dill seeds to keep from getting hungry during long church services.

When you make dill vinegar, you can use the stems, leaves, or flowers of the plant. But watch out for black swallowtail caterpillars when you're harvesting . . . they love to eat dill. I like to put any caterpillar I catch into an empty fishbowl, feed it, and then watch it pupate.

Tarragon is an herb that tastes a little bit like licorice. It makes a traditional herb vinegar that's often used in French cooking. (The French call the herb "the little dragon".) It's also been used in many other cultures for hundreds of years.

Vinegar flavored with garlic smells so good that it's hard to resist. Garlic is a nice herb to combine with other ones such as basil, lovage, lemon balm, and thyme. To add it to vinegar, just peel a clove and put it into the bottle.

There are many other herbs you can use. Mint, for instance, makes a good vinegar to put on fruit salads and lamb. Salad burnet gives vinegar a cucumber flavor. Lemon balm and lemon thyme give it a citrus taste.

If you want to color your vinegar, you can put in chive flowers to tint it light pink, or opal basil to turn it deep pink. Dill flowers will help give your vinegar a greenish yellow color.

The effects are striking. Sometimes when I use herbs to color my vinegars, people ask me if I put food coloring in the jars!

MAKING THE VINEGARS

To make the vinegars, all you need are bottles, vinegar, and herbs. You can use recycled bottles. Old vinegar or cooking oil bottles work well. Some apple juice comes in nice jug shaped half-gallon bottles, which make pretty containers.

There are several different kinds of vinegars you can use. The prettiest and most popular kind is ordinary white vinegar. Apple cider and red wine vinegar can also be used, but they have stronger flavors and darker colors than white vinegar, so you may not be able to taste or see the herbs as well.

When you've got everything together, all you have to do is put several sprigs of the herb or herbs you want to use in a bottle and then fill it with vinegar and screw on the lid. Oh . . . do make sure you wash the herbs in clear water first. Once I forgot to do that, and a lady found a bug in one of my bottles!

After the jars are sealed, you need to let them steep. Just put them in the sun for a couple of days, or let them sit for two weeks indoors. (You can speed the process a bit by warming the vinegar before filling the bottles. But don't boil the liquid, or you may change its flavor.)

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