If your basil plant is flowering do you remove the flowers to prolong the growing season? Before you throw them out why not try making basil flower vinegar?
Basil flower vinegar is a great way of using the unwanted blooms from your basil plant.
>> Related article: What to do with Basil Flowers?
Basil blooms have a similar flavor to basil leaves, but are often a little more bitter. While you can add the flowers to salads or use them similar to how you would use fresh basil, some people find the flavor too intense. A great alternative is to infuse the flowers in vinegar.
You can use the basil flower vinegar wherever you would use regular vinegar whenever you want a kick of flavor.
How to make basil flower vinegar
Basil flower vinegar is very simple to make and adds a wonderful fresh peppery flavor to vinegar, which can then be used for salad dressings or other recipes.
To prepare the basil flowers, snip them off the plant. You want to remove the entire section of the stem where the flowers are growing, not the individual flowers.
Rinse them in clean water, and pat them dry with paper towels.
Place the basil blooms into a clean bottle, fill the bottle with white vinegar, and seal it.
Use the best quality vinegar that you can. White vinegar or white wine vinegar is best to use, nothing with a strong flavor as you want the basil flower scent to be the prominent flavor.
You need to leave it in a cool dark place for 1-3 weeks to allow the basil flower oils to infuse into the vinegar.
After this time, check the vinegar – it should have turned a pale yellow. Now you can strain the vinegar to remove the basil flower heads. I like to pour the vinegar through a strainer into a clean glass measuring jug, and then carefully pour it back into the bottle it was infused in.
Use the vinegar as you would normally, in salad dressings, or sauces, whenever you want a bit more flavor. It pairs well with most Mediterranean flavors like tomato and capsicum.
Basil flower vinegar recipe card
Basil Flower Vinegar
How to make basil flower infused vinegar.
Ingredients
- 8 Basil flower heads
- 2 cups white vinegar
Equipment
- 16 oz glass bottle
Instructions
- Use sharp scissors or secateurs to harvest the basil flowers (including the stem) from the plant.
- Rinse the flowers and carefully pat them dry (be careful not to crush them)
- Place the flowers into a small bottle, and top it up with white vinegar.
- Seal the bottle and place it in a cool dark place for at least 7 days.
- When the vinegar is a pale yellow color is is ready to use. Strain the vinegar to remove the flower heads, and return to the bottle.
- Store in a cool dark place and use as you would regular vinegar.
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