If you've read my blog for a while, you'll have noticed that I like to make my own food. There isn't a lot that intimidates me: pasta, yogurt, and bread are things I've mastered. However, there are at least two arenas in which I consistently fail: mozzarella cheese and vinegar. The mozzarella cheese (learn how here) is explainable, I think, because I don't have access to milk that has been pasteurized at a high heat.
The vinegar, though, is more confusing. First I tried making red wine vinegar by a method in which I attracted the requisite bacteria by exposing wine to air. Cheesecloth protected it from fruit flies, but all I got was moldy wine. Then I ordered some wine bacteria online, and introduced that into wine. (The bacteria is called mother of vinegar.) Alas, that also molded, and the mother died. This fall, I read that you could submerge your apple peelings in water and they would become vinegar. I especially liked this idea, because I had peels leftover from apple sauce, and it wouldn't require me to risk much money or time. I'm happy about that low investment, because tonight I remembered to look in my jam pantry. There I found the jars - filled with vinegar, topped with mold, and crawling with fruit flies. I have resigned myself to purchased vinegar from now on.
2 comments:
Have you gone to any foodie diy chat areas to see what others might say about the problem? Have you been sterilizing your jars before you start the process? Are any agents from the vinegar production industry lurking in your neighborhood and surreptitiously putting mold and fruit fly eggs in your mothers?
lol. I admire your determination. Vinegar is definitely not something I'm looking to do at home, however.
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