Transform Leftover Apple Peels Into A Flavorful Vinegar With 3 Ingredients

If you hate waste, love apples, and think vinegar instantly improves store-bought barbecue sauce and gooey homemade chocolate chip cookies alike, making your own scrap vinegar is an absolute must. Instead of purchasing 16 ounces of name-brand ACV for nearly $10 or more, you can make much bigger batches at home for mere pennies. Though the fermentation process can take several weeks, most of your active time is spent giving the mixture a periodic stir. Plus, it only requires three ingredients and a squeaky-clean Mason jar or two.

All you need is apple scraps (peels and cores), water, and sugar or honey. The sugar or honey provides a feast for the bacteria that cause fermentation, while the apples add lots of flavor and nutrition to your vinegar. Basically, all you need to do is add your sweetener and apple scraps to the jars, cover them with cool water, and then drape cheesecloth or a clean tea towel over the opening. 

Over about two weeks, the water turns an amber-brown color, signaling that all the flavor, sugars, and nutrition have leached out of the apple scraps. At this point, the vinegar is ready to be strained, decanted into a clean vessel, and aged to develop that classic vinegary sourness. This process can take a few weeks, after which point you can bottle and store it.

While homemade vinegars are unreliable as food preservatives, there are dozens of other ways to use apple scrap vinegar in your daily life. In addition to making store-bought barbecue sauce taste less mass-produced, it adds complex acidity to homemade barbecue sauce too. And it can do the same for homemade ketchup, mustard, relish, and coleslaw. A drizzle added to cookies makes them cakey and tender because of how acids react to leavening agents like baking soda and baking powder.

Apple scrap vinegar is also one of the best substitutes for apple juice in dressings, marinades, and savory sauces. It adds the same apple-y freshness with an acidic bite to elevate the other flavors. You can also add a little ACV to your pie crust. You won't taste it, but it does add a bit of protection against overworking, one of the most common pie crust mistakes to avoid. 

After apple season is over, it may be fun to try making scrap vinegar with other fruits. Pineapple skins and strawberry tops or even the scraps from peaches, pears, and plums can become tangy fruit vinegar using the same fermentation method. Drizzle them into fruit salad with honey, splash them into cocktails, or put them in pretty bottles as thoughtful homemade gifts. This vinegar is so versatile and delicious it's likely to become a new pantry staple.