Apple Scraps Cider Vinegar with Mother is a traditional British recipe for a classic steamed pudding of a sponge-type mix with black treacle and fresh cranberries that's served with an almost solid sauce of butter, cream and sugar flavoured with vanilla. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic British version of: Apple Scraps Cider Vinegar with Mother.
(click this button to prevent the screen from sleeping so Cook Mode is 'ON')
I've been experimenting with fermentation over the past year making sauerkraut (or lacto-fermenting in general) and home-made kombucha so I thought it was time to get a mother of vinegar going. It turns out that using apple scraps is probably the best way of achieving this, hence the following recipe. You end up with a live culture cider vinegar and a mother of vinegar all in the same recipe.
This is a recipe for making a cider vinegar from scratch using nothing more than apple scraps. Ever wondered if you could do anything with the peelings and cores from preparing apples for other recipes? Well, here's something really useful that you can make from them. What's more as this is a 'scratch' recipe you're using natural wild cultures only. This means it's a live culture full of great probiotics. You will also get a 'mother' — this is that cloudy, stringy substance you sometimes see floating inside the vinegar.
Technically, the 'mother of vinegar' is a biofilm composed of a form of cellulose, yeast, and bacteria that sometimes develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids during the process that turns alcohol into acetic acid with the help of oxygen from the air and acetic acid bacteria (AAB). It is similar to the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) mostly known from production of kombucha, but develops to a much lesser extent due to lesser availability of yeast, which is often no longer present in wine/cider at this stage, and a different population of bacteria.
You can use this mother of vinegar to kick-start the fermentation and acidification process when making fruit or other vinegars. I use it for making pineapple and hibiscus vinegar (really delicious) from the leftovers after making naturally sweetened sorrel/hibiscus drink.
Wide-mouthed jars are best for this. I generally use large (1l+) pickled jars. This also means that they already have vinegar-proof lids.
I'm not really a big fan of cooked apples (though I like raw ones) so I tend to make this with foraged apples and crabapples (but not the bitter ones). The local park has a good apple tree that's very fruitful most years. The apples are good but hardly anyone collects them so I use the windfalls for this recipe.
Ingredients:
apple scraps — enough to fill your jar ¾ of the way full
Organic cane sugar (about 1 1/2 tbsp per cup of water)
Filtered water (if using tap water boil it then let out uncovered in a bowl over night)
Muslin (Cheesecloth) or kitchen towel
Elastic band
A Splash of over-fermented kombucha can be used to kick-start the reaction
Method:
Fill your jar ¾ full with apple scraps, about 1 1/2 cups of peels and cores (or chopped-up windfalls with any brown bits discarded).
Dissolve 1–2 tbsp of sugar per cup of water and pour it over the apples until covered.
Cover the mouth of the jar with a double layer of muslin (cheesecloth) and secure in place with an elastic band.
Set in in a warm, dark spot and stir once a day.
After 2–3 weeks, strain out the apples and return the liquid to the jar.
Cover the jar with muslin then set it aside to develop for another 3–4 weeks (fermentation will complete and the lactobacilli will convert the alcohol to vinegar), stirring occasionally, until the culture smells and tastes like vinegar.
Bottle, cap, and enjoy. As this is vinegar it will keep in the pantry for a very long time.
