The Clay Coyote Homemade Vinegar Crock

We’ve been making Vinegar Crocks for several years now, and with true summer but a couple of months off, NOW is the time to start your homemade vinegar.

Homemade vinegar has a flavor you won’t believe.  You use wine (red or white) or hard cider, a mother or starter which can be gotten from most beer or wine brewing shops or Mark Larrow at http://bit.ly/vinegar-mother.  It takes a different mother for each, but once you get one going it’s easy to keep it going even when you’re not brewing vinegar.

We send instructions with the crock and we’ve got them posted on the blog under Clay Pot Cooking. We also send the bit of cheesecloth you’ll need to cover the top.

It takes about 10 weeks for your first batch so now is the time to get started for summer cooking!

So what do you use it in? First, of course, are salad dressings, as you might expect.  But then there are marinades, deviled eggs, BBQ sauces, a bit in baked beans, any stew, soup and basting sauces for grilling.  A bit of vinegar, olive oil and some herbs on grilled veggies.  Grilling steaks marinate them in a 50-50 mix of teriyaki and worcestershire with some garlic, brown sugar and 2 TBSP of vinegar.

The vinegar isn’t necessarily a flavor in itself, but kicks up other flavors immensely.  Commercial stuff just won’t cut it anymore.  And you can steep herbs in the finished vinegar and make your own herb vinegars for use and gifts!

We’d sure love to have you post recipes in which you use vinegar on the “Submit Recipes” tab above.