Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

Creative ways to use vinegar in cooking, in place of fats

I’m a vinegar collector. I have orange vinegar, walnut vinegar, grapefruit vinegar, a long list of Balsamic vinegars of various origins and ages, and lots of other more common ones.

In Switzerland and France, there is such an impressive variety of artisanal vinegars (a well as oils) that it is easy to build up quite a collection and use it in creative ways to liven up winter vegetables, bland grilled meats, or salads. The beauty of it is that you can often use vinegar to add flavor, and thereby avoid the more traditional use of butter or meat bases, which contain fat. It is a good way to reduce fat in your general cooking habits.

Photo courtesy of FivePrime.

A tasty, good quality vinegar is an easy way to add flavor to an otherwise unappetizing vegetable or meat. After cooking meat or fish, I often deglaze the frying pan  with a nice vinegar, then pour the glaze over the beast in question, along with a drizzle of good quality olive oil. It makes for a much healthier sauce than cream or butter and adds flare to the dish.

With magret de canard, or duck breast, which can have quite a fatty taste, I pour off most of the fat, and then deglaze the drippings with Balsamic or sherry vinegar. Raspberry also works well with duck, and you can add a few crushed raspberries to the sauce as well. The vinegar helps cut the fatty film you often feel in your mouth after eating. Raspberry vinegar is also a perfect compliment to calves’ liver.

Chicken deglazed with Balsamic vinegar, photo courtesy of FivePrime.

I do the same with vegetables that are not so fresh, or to which I want to give a little more pizazz. For instance, I love apple cider vinegar on cauliflower.

One of my favorites is leeks. I sautée equal amounts of leeks (tops and bottoms) and diced potatoes in a bit of olive oil until they’re very, very soft. I then turn the heat up high and deglaze the pan with Balsamic vinegar and serve. It’s always a success and so dead easy.

Vinegar on salads is a given, of course. I drizzle a vinegar whose flavor goes well with vegetable in question, and then drizzle a bit of oil over it. For instance, with rampon, a kind of watercress we find here in Switzerland, I think a good quality apple cider oil and walnut oil go beautifully.

If you buy extra-fresh salads from the farm and good quality vinegars, you’ll find you can often even skip the oil altogether.

The virtues of vinegar: it can lower blood sugar of diabetics and encourage weight loss

Chinese vinegar jar, photo courtesy of FivePrime.

The exciting thing about this is that doctors have recently found that vinegar helps lower levels of sugar in blood in diabetics, so this offers a tasty and natural way of trying to keep blood sugar levels under control. Those who participated in the vinegar study not only had lower sugar levels, but they also lost weight.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.