Basic Wild Vinegar Recipes

Creating fine vinegars infused with the flavour of your favourite foraged finds is super quick, and, luckily for us, super easy! Flavoured vinegars can be used to add an extra depth of flavour to pasta sauces, ragus, stews, and other dishes, as a pickling vinegar, or as a dressing for salads, meats, cheeses or even ice cream! Most wild vinegars are made from fragrant foraged flowers, like Flowering Currant or Elderflower, but you can also use herbs, such as Wild Thyme and Mugwort. All you need is some vinegar and a suitable wild foraged find, preferably one with a stong, unique flavour. You can also infuse vinegars with foraged berries, such as redcurrant, raspberry and blackberry, to make a sweet dressing similar in consistency to balsamic. For these berry vinegars, you'll also need some sugar.

Standard Wild Vinegar

Ingredients

Prep Time: 5 Minutes

Cooking Time: None

Quantity: Makes a 350ml bottle of vinegar

• 350ml of White Wine, Red Wine or Cider Vinegar.
• A small handful of foraged wild plants / flowers.

Method

1. Take a sterilised jam jar and fill with your foraged wild plant/flowers.
2. Fill the jar with your chosen vinegar, and seal.
3. Gently shake the jar once per day.
4. After two weeks, the vinegar should have fully infused.
5. Strain the vinegar into a jug through a sieve or muslin cloth to remove all traces of the foraged find.
6. Decant the infused vinegar into a new sterilised bottle and seal.
7. You can store the vinegar on a shelf for up to twelve months.

Wild Berry Vinegars

Ingredients

Prep Time: 10 Minutes

Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Quantity: Makes a 1.5 litres of vinegar

• 600ml of White Wine or Cider Vinegar.
• 1kg of foraged wild berries.
• Granulated Sugar

Method

1. Take a large bowl and add the berries. Lightly crush the berries using a wooden spoon or rolling pin.
2. Add the vinegar to the bowl, cover with a teatowel, and allow the mixture to steep for 4-5 days, stirring daily.
3. Strain the mixture through muslin into a large jug. It is best to suspend the mulsin over the jug using elastic bands and empty the mixture onto the top and leaving overnight to drip through. You can press down a little on the mixture the following day to get a bit more juice out.
4. Measure the berry-vinegar liquid, then add it to a pan. For every 600ml of liquid, add 450g of granulated sugar. Gently bring the pan to the boil, stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. You can also skim off any scum that rises. Boil for about 10 minutes, then remove from the heat and let the mixture cool.
5. Once cooled, bottle the berry vinegar into a sterilised jar and seal.
6. You can store the vinegar on a shelf for up to twelve months.