Thursday, October 28, 2010

Chili Vinegar: Do Try This At Home!







Philly Food Lovers' Chili Vinegar
Ingredients:
1 pint white vinegar
1 large jalapeno pepper (or enough fresh chilis of your choice to make about 1/4 cup pureed)
Equipment:
4 coffee filters
Sauce pan, blender, funnel, strainer (or two)  medium sized bowl

Puree pepper and vinegar in blender.  Heat to simmer in saucepan over low.  Cool completely, and using funnel, pour mixture back into vinegar bottle.  Set this aside and forget about it.  The longer you let it infuse, the hotter it will be.  Anything from an hour to a week works. When your aging process is complete, place coffee filter in strainer over bowl.  Carefully pour vinegar into strainer and let it drip into bowl.  Once filter becomes saturated it will no longer strain, so you will need to move onto the next filter.  Continue this process until all the vinegar is filtered and solids are removed.   Rinse bottle thoroughly.  Discard the pepper solids, and, using funnel, pour strained vinegar back into bottle.  Decorate as desired and present to impressed friends.

NOTE:  This same process applies to fruit vinegars:  peaches, blueberries and raspberries that are past their useful life as consumable fresh fruit make wonderful flavored vinegar.  Use the same procedure describe above, but age on the longer side--at least 3 days.

No comments: