Fruit vinegar, like apple cider vinegar, is a specialty vinegar made with fermented fruit. Apple cider's versatility for culinary, dietary, household, and self-care make it a stand-alone all-star. With its many benefits, "the mother" strand of culture turns the apple cider liquid into vinegar.
Unfiltered or filtered, each has distinctive qualities depending on your goals. Unfiltered carries "the mother," which provides probiotics for good gut health and aids digestion. Filtered is also a digestive aid, but its uses in the kitchen and for personal care are more prevalent. Use it with your salads for dressing or as a clarifying agent in the shower for healthy scalp care every two weeks. When shopping, remember the shelf life is longer if the heat is a part of the pasteurization process. Filtered lasts longer than unfiltered.
Filtered, as you can see the liquid is translucent, to where you can see right through it. This vinegar does not have "the mother" so this vinegar won't give you the health benefits as much as the "unfiltered" and has "the mother". But still works just as well for flavor or multipurpose use.
Check out our vinegar pantry at Press & Mortar!
Specialty fruit vinegar, like orange, strawberry, and fig, attracts more shoppers with their elegant and distinctive packaging in smaller, more colorful bottles. I prefer specialty kinds of vinegar during the week to switch up my routines: great for salad dressings, adding them to marinades, or dipping sauces. Consider them with a piece of crusty baguette and some olive oil, an addition to an excellent sponge cake to infuse or eat with your sashimi or crudo. Specialty vinegar gives your dish an edge and leaves your guests wanting more.
Would you ever know that vinegar was in our baked goods? How about soy sauce? It's true, sometimes a lingering ingredient makes up to help complete and accommodate the dish. I like to put it as vinegar was hanging around and noticed this dish needed a little help. Without it, the dish was always lacking. Have you ever ate anything that you didn't know there was a bizarre ingredient in the background helping the dish out? Of course, since some ingredients attract each other even though they are opposites. Like a flake of salt on your chocolate/caramels, helps make the candy sweeter with that one flake of salt. Enjoying these vinegars is like life blowing you a kiss, respect these vinegars or they will bite back!