I'm Kami McBride, author of The Herbal Kitchen. And I'm here at Mountain Rose Herbs, the awesome Mountain Rose Herbs.
And, today I'm going to make an herbal vinegar. Lavender-rosemary vinegar.
And I love herbal vinegars because, first of all they're so simple to make
and they're so versatile. So I'm going to talk about three different ways that you can use this vinegar.
And exactly how to make it. So again, we're making a lavender-rosemary vinegar, and we're using apple cider vinegar.
And it's super simple. We're gonna start with one-quarter cup of lavender. Dried Lavender.
And then we're gonna put in two tablespoons of rosemary.
And here we go. Just put it in here.
And then we're just gonna kind of grind up, just break open the plant a little bit. Grind it up.
Just put it in a little mortar and pestle, and just break open the plant wall.
Get it all ready to be infused into the vinegar.
And so then you're gonna go ahead and put it into a jar.
So we've got a pint jar here.
So, normally, I am really. I like to use every single piece of plant.
And especially when you start growing and harvesting your own herbs you're like, every single morsel of the plant becomes so valuable, right?
So.
And then I'm gonna put in a cup of vinegar.
And I'm just gonna use the jar. This is a pint
so there's two cups. You could put two cups of liquid
so I'll put a little bit just like, one cup.
And then, you know, normally the mason jars. These pint jars come with a metal lid.
And, I don't really like to use plastic, however, if you were to top this with the metal lid,
the metal reacts with the vinegar.
And you could come back in a couple weeks and start to see things that have turned black.
A lot of recipe books talk about putting parchment paper. The thing is that
I encourage people to shake their vinegars.
And if you're shaking your vinegar and it touches the parchment, it will start to eat
the parchment and break through to the metal.
So this is one of those places where I use these non-reactive lids.
And, you know, these plastic lids. So.
You now have rosemary and vinegar infusing into the apple cider vinegar.
And I usually let this sit for two to four weeks.
And I keep it out on the counter and I come by and shake it, agitate it.
Because agitation is one of the things that helps to extract
the plant into the medium that we're using which is the apple cider vinegar.
So you keep it in a cool, dark place. You don't set it in the sun.
You can put it in a cabinet or put it on the counter.
Shake it.
Look at it, talk to it. Think about what you're going to be using it for.
It's really the place where we bring Mother Earth into our home to help take care of our health.
And so, I love this place that I have in my kitchen where all of my
medicines are infusing and extracting.
So this, in here we have rosemary and lavender. And these
These herbs are so supportive to the skin.
They really help digestion.
I'm going to be decanting this for you, and once we decant and strain
the herbs from the vinegar
we can use it for cleaning. We can use it for kind of, every day skin issues.
And occasional skin, redness, things like that.
And we can also put it in our salad dressing.
And the thing about salad dressing is, I see a lot of people making
really delicious meals and great salads
and then we still are using the salad dressings at the store.
I want you to read the label of even the organic ones.
The oils are just full of cheap oils and they're
it's one of the breakdown areas in our health, is our salad dressings.
Ans so making your own vinegar,
you can start to make the most incredible, delicious
salad dressings that are full of herbs.
So. We're gonna let this sit for two to four weeks and then we're gonna strain it out.
Ok so this has been sitting out for two to four weeks.
You want to let it sit for that long. Shake it.
And now we're gonna decant it. Okay.
So you got your cotton muslin, a thick weave, thin fabric.
And you get yourself a funnel and your jar.
and you also remember you want the non-reactive lid because the vinegar will eat metal.
And if you don't believe me, do a little experiment.
Put a little metal lid on there and pretty soon you see these
black, floaty things in your vinegar. So no metal around your vinegar.
Even though we're using a metal funnel, that's only in contact with it for a very short time.
Ok.
So, we're gonna decant.
Your vinegar.
Oh my gosh.
You that color? The lavender has got like a little bit of a pink.
Beautiful. Beautiful color.
Okay. So you could just let it passively drip like that.
But if you're, you know, you wanna hurry.
Things drip a little faster if you lift it up.
And then you can always squeeze it.
So we're just gonna, just for time's sake. I'm gonna go ahead.
You could just like, let this walk away for half an hour and come back.
But we're gonna squeeze it.
And it's such a beautiful color.
And yeah. So we've got, we've been infusing the lavender and the rosemary
Incredible, germ-fighting herbs.
Get all that squeezed out.
Okay, so now you have your herb-infused vinegar.
Nice. This is so nice.
Herbal vinegars are so easy.
And they last for a long time. This is good for a year, two years.
And you probably already use vinegar, don't you? So
might as well, get herbs into it.
Okay so from here, it's really about dispensing it, right?
So, depends on what you store it in, usually.
And so you can put it in a spray bottle, like this.
Yeah, so this is a great applicator for skin issues.
You can just spray it right on the skin that seems a little bit irritated.
Skin that seems a little bit irritated, agitated. Really helps with that.
And also this is great for cleaning, you can clean your countertops with this.
You just spray it on your countertops, amazing germ-fighting capacity.
Or.
You can put it in a jar like this.
And this is what you keep next to your herbal infused oil
Which is another entire chapter in the herbal kitchen, culinary oils.
Herbal oils.
So you have your herbal-infused vinegar.
And this makes such a good salad dressing.
You put a three-quarter cup of olive oil,
quarter cup of your lavender-rosemary vinegar, and just
chop up some fresh herbs, oh my gosh, it's so good.
So, there's your herb-infused vinegar.
And if you're interested in other really simple
herbal recipes like that, my book
The Herbal Kitchen has 250 recipes.
You can get it at MountainRoseHerbs.com or KamiMcbride.com