Chive Blossom Vinegar

Chive blossoms are completely edible. While they’re beautiful as a bouquet, they taste like very garlickly onions. They can be broken up and added to salads, used in chive butter, put into scones. But my favourite way to use them is to make chive flower vinegar, which keeps for… forever? And it makes a very delicious salad dressing or finishing flavour for soup.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of chive flowers, enough to fill a small jar

• White wine vinegar, enough to cover the chive flowers

Notes: You can use any vinegar you like to use in salad dressing. Many recipes call for distilled vinegar, but I strongly prefer white wine vinegar here.

Method

Rinse the blossoms: Pluck the chive blossoms from the chives. I leave them whole but its okay if they break. Soak the chive blossoms in water so any dirt or bugs are released. Drain.

Cover with vinegar: Place all the chive blossoms into a jar then fill with vinegar until covered.

Wait: Leave to sit at room temperature for at least 2 weeks until it smells like chive vinegar. 

Alternative: If you are in a rush, you can bring the vinegar up to a boil then pour it over the chive blossoms. This will extract the flavour more quickly, so you can use it as soon as it cools down. However, I find the slower method to give a much more nuanced flavour (and its easier).