Chive Vinegar

As a kid, I remember helping my mom gather chive flowers from our herb garden to make homemade chive vinegar. For many years, I’ve had several chive plants growing in my own herb gardens and look forward to making a new batch of herb infused vinegar every spring. Since chives have a light onion flavor,  chive vinegar takes on the same flavor and is a wonderful flavor addition to homemade salad dressings. Making infused chive vinegar is quite easy. The hardest part is letting the jar sit on the counter for a few days to infuse before you can use it!

How to make chive vinegar

This recipe does not use exact quantities since how many chive flowers you harvest will dictate how much infused vinegar you make.

1. Harvest chive flowers just after they open and before they start to die off and turn brown. There can be a small bit of green stem left on the flower and that is fine. It will add more flavor to the infusion!

2. Gently rinse the flower heads to remove any dirt or bugs. Strain the water off. They do not have to be completely dry since any water left on them will mix into the vinegar.

3. Place the chive flowers in a glass jar. Pour apple cider vinegar over the flowers until they are covered. I used about 3/4 cup chive flowers and about 1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar. (Here’s how to make your own apple cider vinegar if you haven’t tried it yet!)

4. Put a lid on the jar and sit it out of direct sunlight for a few days to infuse (I’ve actually forgotten about my chive infused vinegar for a couple weeks before and it made no difference in the end result!)  If you think of it, you can give the jar a gentle shake every so often. Within a day, the vinegar will start to turn the lovely color of the chive flowers and take on a delicious onion scent.

5. Once the vinegar is done infusing, pour it through a cheesecloth lined fine mesh sieve to strain off the flowers. Feed the left over flowers to your chickens or compost them. Store the vinegar in a glass jar and use in your favorite homemade salad dressing recipes like this mason jar chive vinaigrette from Grow a Good Life.

Making homemade herb infused vinegar is quite easy. From my experience, the more herbs you add and the longer you let them sit the more flavor the vinegar will have. Now that you know how to make infused chive vinegar,  you can start experimenting with other herbs. This year I’m going to try making a garlic infused vinegar once we harvest the garlic growing in our garden later in the summer. Yum! 

Do you make herb infused vinegar? What kind do you make?