Ingredients · Other

Vinegar

Vinegar
Vinegar powder — usually red wine vinegar dried onto a carrier such as maltodextrin — and it solves the same problem as dried lemon: sourness in a dry blend that has to stay dry. Two products carry it. In harissa and in a jerk blend, that acidity is doing real work, balancing chile heat and fat in a way that salt cannot.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partPowder
KindOther
CaffeineCaffeine-free
TasteSharp acidity with a faint fermented depth; less bright than citrus, more savoury

How to use it

It is in the blend. Where a dish tastes flat and is already salted, acid is usually what is missing, and this is acid you can sprinkle.

With food

Chile and fat. Pork. Potato and chips. Cucumber. Onion. Tomato.

With spices

Chile, garlic and caraway, as in harissa. Allspice and thyme, in jerk. Black pepper.

With tea

Not a tea ingredient.

Its story

Where it comes from

Our lot does not name the carrier, which is the thing worth knowing — vinegar powder is not pure vinegar and the carrier is usually a starch.

What happened

Vinegar is what happens when wine is left alone — the word is French, vin aigre, sour wine — and it is one of the oldest preservatives there is. Its role in a spice blend is modern and industrial: drying an acid onto a starch so it can travel in a packet is a twentieth-century trick, and it is why a dry seasoning can taste like a marinade.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

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