Saturday, August 28, 2010

Pepper Vinegar



Recently,my brother reminded me of the pepper vinegar that was a staple in my house when I was growing up. At some point, my dad started growing the peppers and making his own. I hadn't seen either the prepared vinegar or even the peppers for some time. Not a trendy item in the city, I guess.

About 3 weeks ago, we found beautiful bunches of pepper plants that looked very much like the peppers in the vinegar bottle - or at least that's what I remembered them looking like.


We only bought one bunch, which was way too few to fill the nice bottle I wanted to use, so when I saw more this week, we bought three bunches. It takes quite a few bunches to fill a jar with peppers. Too bad you can't eat the leaves - or can you?


To make your own pepper vinegar, just get a jar full of nice clean peppers, add white vinegar to cover and wait 3 weeks. This is a staple for turnip, collard or mustard greens in the South. You can replace the vinegar several times when the vinegar starts to be used up.


I heated the vinegar before pouring over the peppers and keep my pepper vinegar in the fridge. I also added peppercorns - probably less than 2 tsp to this jar.