The Cottage Smallholder


stumbling self sufficiency in a small space

Raspberry vinegar recipe

 

Home grown organic raspberries

Home grown organic raspberries

My friend Teresa introduced me to raspberry vinegar. She had made a dressing for a hot goat’s cheese salad using olive oil, raspberry vinegar and honey. It was out of this world – sweet yet tart. A raspberry lover’s dream dressing.

The dressing had me searching the shops for raspberry vinegar the next day. As far as I remember it was quite expensive. And after an extended period of over indulgence in warm soft goat’s cheese salads it fell out of favour and got lost on the shelves in the larder.

Following the success of the homemade orange vinegar, I decided to make some raspberry vinegar using some of our home grown organic fruit that I found in the freezer. It was so easy to make and tastes amazing – far more intense than commercially produced lines.

My mum mentioned that my grandmother used to drink raspberry vinegar mixed with iced water as a child.
“She said it was delicious and promised to make it for us. But she never did.”
This sounded pretty grim to me until I sampled my homemade raspberry vinegar. A little research on the Internet led me to these recipes for raspberry ‘shrub’ vinegar. I nearly didn’t follow up this lead as I assumed it was a raspberry tonic for shrubs! The raspberry vinegar is sweetened and made into a cordial.  Properly bottled and corked it can be stored for years.

All my raspberry vinegar has been bottled and wrapped for the gate side stand. But today I’m going to make another batch and then give the cordial a whirl. Finally after all these years my mum will be able to taste raspberry vinegar as a refreshing summer drink.


 

This post has been entered for the grow your own January 2010 hosted by House of Annie.

 

Raspberry vinegar recipe
Recipe Type: Condiments
Author: Fiona Nevile
Prep time: 20 mins
Total time: 20 mins
Ingredients
  • Equipment – A 1.5 litre Le Parfait jar with a rubber seal and a funnel
  • 500g of raspberries
  • Approx 1250ml of white wine vinegar
  • Half a teaspoon of good Balsamic vinegar (secret ingredient)
  • A few raspberries for decoration before bottling
Instructions
  1. Pick over the raspberries discarding any bad ones. Wash and shake dry.
  2. Meanwhile heat the white wine vinegar in a non reactive saucepan (not aluminium) and wash, dry and sterilise the Le Parfait jar in a medium oven.
  3. When the vinegar has reached boiling point carefully remove the Le Parfait jar from the oven and place it on a wooden board. I put on the rubber seal at this stage, using oven gloves.
  4. Put the raspberries into the jar and using a funnel pour the hot vinegar over the raspberries leaving a 2cm gap from the top of the jar. Seal immediately and leave to seep for 14 days.
  5. Line a sieve with sterilised muslin and strain the vinegar. Pour the vinegar into glass bottles pop in a few fresh raspberries for decoration and seal with plastic lined lids.
  6. This batch filled 6x227ml bottles.

  Leave a reply

20 Comments

  1. Deborah

    Where is the orange vinegar recipe?

  2. Frank McRobb

    I’m now in my nineties. When still at school I holidayed with my grandmother who made lots of raspberry vinegar.
    She used it to make a great refreshing effervescent drink.
    My recall is that a “cordial” amount of raspberry vinegar was put into a glass, topped up with water to which was added a teaspoonful (I can’t remember whether heaped,level or less) of, I recollect was bicarbonate of soda.
    Can anyone confirm or necessarily modify the above?

    • Angela Harrison

      I have discovered a bottle of what I expected to be Haig’s scotch whisky faintly marked in my father’s handwriting as raspberry vinegar. It is probably at least 50 years old. It was well sealed and tastes divine. Thanks dad!

  3. Teresa Baron

    Hi Fiona
    I was just googling the recipe for raspberry vinegar – and came across this. Read it, and thought, what a coincidence – this person was introduced to the goat’s cheese recipe by a Teresa! Doh!
    Then realised it was you….!!
    I’ve just visited my sister (who first introduced me to the goats’ cheees recipe) and I said I’d find a raspberry vinegar recipe for her, and voila!
    Hope you’re keeping well
    Teresa x

  4. Rupert Parsons

    We do a Raspberry vinegar, available in fine food outlets all over the country which has a strong raspberry flavour since it is made with a LOT of raspberries and a vinegar which allows the raspberry flavour to “shine.”
    See here for some ideas which others have tweeted us:
    http://www.womersleyfoods.com/p/twitter-recipes.html

  5. Nate @ House of Annie

    Raspberry vinegar cordial sounds pretty good to me!

    Since you are using homegrown fruit, would you like to enter this post in our Grow Your Own roundup this month? Full Details at

    http://chezannies.blogspot.com/2010/01/rambutans-plus-grow-your-own.html

  6. Thanks, Suky – I’ll go and search for it! I have some Sevilles left over from the marmalade

  7. Hi, Fiona,

    How do you define “vegetarian”, “veggie” and “vegan” food?

  8. Joy, the seville gin is a recent thread on here. It smells wonderful.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags are not allowed.

2,303,242 Spambots Blocked by Simple Comments


Copyright © 2006-2024 Cottage Smallholder      Our Privacy Policy      Advertise on Cottage Smallholder


Skip to toolbar
FD