I’d Like My Salad AND Cocktail With Vinegar Please

Gabriel, the “Cocktail Nerd”, recently discussed the issue of vinegar in cocktails, focusing on the Shrub family of cocktails. I think that the concept of using vinegar in cocktails is an awesome idea, and I really advise heading over to Gabriel’s blog and let him introduce you to using vinegar as a cocktail ingredient. His post demonstrates the use of a Raspberry Shrub Syrup, which is basically simple syrup cooked together with raspberries and vinegar. This sounds like a great potential ingredient, but before I read Gabriel’s post, I had been working with using vinegar in cocktails for about a month with one of our chefs, Dax.

Dax is a big fan of gastriques, which he uses to add flavor to various dishes. A gastrique is very similar to Gabriel’s Raspberry Shrub Syrup, but it exclusively uses sugar, vinegar, and whichever flavoring agents one chooses. The result is a cocktail ingredient that is extremely powerful and adds a ton of flavor to any drink. We’ve been working with several gastriques in cocktails lately, and I highly recommend anyone trying to find new flavors sources to do the same. To make a gastrique, follow these steps:

Step 1: Caramelize sugar in a sauce pan.

To do this, add enough water to cover the bottom of a medium sauce pan and a splash of lemon juice with one cup of sugar. The water and lemon juice essentially just keep the sugar from burning and will eventually evaporate as the sugar turns to a caramel. If you are doing this for the first time, you will want to mess with the syrup and constantly question whether it has caramelized. Trust me, you will know when it is done, until then just use a pastry brush to push sugar into the saucepan and keep it off of the sides. Eventually, the bubbles (evaporating water) will disappear as the sugar finalizes its caramel transition and begins to turn a brown color. You can make a light or dark caramel, but don’t let the sugar burn. We could take this caramel and pour it on ice cream, but that would be a waste of a potentially great drink additive.

Step 2: Make a gastrique.

Begin introducing vinegar to the caramel slowly and stir the two together. Be careful at first, as the vinegar and caramel will pop violently as they first meet. I don’t like to name any specific amount of vinegar because using varying amounts can create different gastriques, but basically, you need to mix enough in enough vinegar until the gastrique becomes less like a caramel and more like syrup that will pour off the spoon you are stirring with. Basically, ask yourself, can I pour this into cocktail shaker? Keep everything on the stove on medium-low heat.

Step 3: Flavor your gastrique.

Use the same rules for flavoring a gastrique that you would for any simple syrup. Spiced elements will take longer and rely on the presence of heat; herbal elements will become part of the gastrique sooner and can be burnt by too much heat. Keep tasting the gastrique and remove from the stove when satisfied. Allow the gastrique to cool, leaving any non-herbal ingredients in it to add more flavor. Add an ounce of vodka to serve as a preservative and store in the fridge in a sealed container. The sealed part is important, as I have found the flavor of gastriques, for whatever reason, to change overtime when not stored correctly. I actually like to use the spare vacuum wine sealers I have around the house to keep this from occurring. I don’t know why this happens and seems to be distinct to my gastriques, but it does and can be avoided by taking these steps.

As with any simple syrup, all types of sugar will work and can influence the distinct qualities of your gastrique. Try one with brown sugar, and you will get a really nice change. Various types of vinegar also create new possibilities for you to experiment with. White wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, rice wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar…the potential is tremendous. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend using vinegar that would pair with the flavor additives you have chosen as they would in a dish. For example, if you are using traditionally Asian ingredients, like ginger, a rice wine vinegar works well. But, don’t let yourself get too restricted by this advice, Dax made a killer Balsamic gastrique flavored with rosemary, which we mixed with a red wine simple syrup and used in the Mergroni, as a substitute for sweet vermouth.

Our favorite drink to this point has been a Vanilla-Cardamom Sidecar, I call the Wreck. This is basically a traditional Sidecar which has a Vanilla-Cardamom gastrique added to it. I love Sidecars, but this gastrique flavored variant is especially awesome. At the bar, we managed to convince several people to take the vinegar plunge, and everybody really loved it.

The Wreck

1 ½ oz Brandy
½ oz Cointreau
½ oz Lemon Juice
1/3 oz Vanilla-Cardamom Gastrique
Shake all ingredients in a shaker with ice and strain into a cocktail glass garnished with a lemon twist.

The potential for using vinegar in cocktails is endless. In some circumstances, a gastrique might be best, while in others, a shrub syrup might work best. I recommend thinking of these concepts as two basic extremes and mixing the two together to meet somewhere in the middle, using a juice, wine, or even sake based syrup to make a wildly different shrub syrup, or finding a completely different route. Either way, if you experiment with vinegar even a little bit, you will be hooked and start to explore all of the possibilities. I promise you will find distinct and exciting cocktail possibilities.