This Chive Blossom Vinegar recipe is easy to make, a simple process of infusing vinegar with flowers. It takes about 15 minutes to prepare, then 1-3 weeks for the vinegar to be ready. The pretty potion can be used for dressings, marinades, shrubs and reductions, on sandwiches, soups and potatoes, to make pickles… Once you taste this vinegar, ideas for using it in your cooking will follow.
Use organically grown chives and blossoms so that you don’t ingest pesticides or other chemicals. Before you make the Chive Blossom Vinegar recipe, you must wash and dry the flowers. I use a salad spinner – if you don’t have one use a drying screen or the cooling racks you use for baking. I do not suggest drying the blossoms in an oven because heating them diminishes the onion flavor.
To make the Chive Blossom Vinegar recipe, I use clear or pale vinegar (rice wine, champagne, white balsamic). This is because the pom-pom shaped flowers turn the liquid a vivid pinky-purple shade. Since the vinegar is visually appealing, I prefer to use clear jars. Place the filled jars in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks until the liquid changes color. Check the bottles daily to make sure none of the flowers have floated up and out of the vinegar. If they have, push them back in with a clean utensil or they can mold and ruin the batch.
I make this recipe with one chive flower for each ounce of vinegar. For the Chive Blossom Vinegar photos in this post, I used 16 flowers and approximately 16 ounces of vinegar in each 20 ounce jar. It is important to leave space between the liquid and the jar seals. This keeps the vinegar from reacting with and deteriorating them.
This recipe is set for one 16 ounce bottle, but you can easily alter the amount. Simply change the number next to where it says “servings” in the recipe and it will auto-adjust it for you.
I photographed the Chive Blossom Vinegar in a local park because it was sunnier than our garden at that time of day. When we got home and viewed the pics, we could not stop laughing at the photo below; that’s our greyhound son Django photo-bombing the vinegar.
To submit questions about this recipe, leave a note in the comment section below.
For growing information, read the Glamorosi Cooks article titled How to Grow, Harvest and Divide Chives.
| Prep Time | 10 minutes |
| Passive Time | 2 weeks |
| Servings |
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- Place the chive blossoms into sterilized jar, pour vinegar over them leaving space at the top so the vinegar doesn't react with the seal or lid.
- Place in the refrigerator for 1-3 weeks until the vinegar reaches the desired potency, then strain into new or re-sterilized jars.
Chive Blossom Vinegar makes a lovely hostess or house-warming gift. Add a pretty label, ribbon or twine, and a pack of chive seeds or potted chives.
