Three cheers for the chive plant…
Hip, hip hooray…hip, hip hooray…hip, hip hooray!!!!!
Why all the chive love?
Well, whether you have a summer garden or not, there are a few reasons to love a chive plant:
- It’s a perennial (comes back every year … and even if you try to pull it out, it’ll probably come back anyways).
- It will grace your garden very early so you can have fresh snipped oniony goodness before you even plant your summer garden!
- It’s just so dang purty 😉
You guys know I’ve been harvesting and making things with my chives for a very long time.
Back in 2015, I wrote a blog post on making chive oil (you can see all the deets here). It always makes me happy because it’s made with the first thing I harvest from the garden in the spring … chives!!!
Like I tell you in the post, make up a batch of this and keep it in the freezer…whenever you go visit a friend, gab a jar, pick up a fresh loaf of bread and bring it as a hostess gift (you will have a friend for life!!)
But today we will talk about making a quick (and beeeeautiful) vinegar with chive blossoms. When they bloom, snip them (it makes the plant itself stronger because the plant’s brain isn’t saying ‘oooo, I need to send all the nutrients to that pretty flower’).
If you are using them for vinegar, you will use them fresh…but if you are making chive salt you need to dry them out (yup, chive salt…recipe coming soon!!).
Here is a photo of my vinegar from last year – you can see the colour changing right in the jar!!!
It’s such a pretty jar…I figure it does double-duty…gives you a great tasting vinegar AND it looks beautiful!!
If you want to feel accomplished in your garden, plant some chives. And even if you don’t have a garden, plant it in your flower bed…you won’t be sorry!!!
Homemade Chive Blossom Vinegar
Ingredients
- 2 cups Chive Blossoms thoroughly rinsed
- 2 cups White vinegar You can use white vinegar, white wine vinegar or Champagne Vinegar
Instructions
- Fill your resealable jar full with chive blossoms and pour vinegar all the way to the top and seal your jar (remember, if you'd like this to steep more quickly, heat up the vinegar before pouring it over the flowers).
- Shake the jar and transfer to a windowsill or the corner of your countertop (I've read some people put it in a dark place but I've never noticed a need to do this).
- Let sit for a week or so, shaking once or twice a day, until the vinegar is a light pink and the blossoms have lost most of their color.
- Drain vinegar into a clean jar and discard flowers.
