Could I have a little powdered vinegar on that?

Under the category of things you don't often think about, but perhaps should:

It seems that the rage these days with pro chefs is powdered vinegars. Their usage is more common than I had thought (not that I had thought much on them). An article in the current Restaurant News (a trade mag, so you won't see it on bookstands) relates that dusting with powdered vinegar has become quite the trendy thing.

Powdered vinegar is actually drying out vinegar and putting on maltodextrin to create crystals. You can then put in on or in different things. It's used as both a preservative and a flavoring ingredient.

Apparently it is commonly used to "flavor up" things like salads and such---mix a little powdered vinegar and some other things in with a little vegetable oil and spray it on a salad. Tasty, efficient, and cheap.

But it is also used on ice cream, and in pastries, powdered on pain d'epices, mixed in yogurt, made into ices, as a marinade, or on fish and chips, dusted on potatoes, used as sauce basing for fish, on fish tartare or poke, or in dry rubs for chicken and steak.

Further, you can have any variety of powdered fruit vinegars (apple, pear, etc.), balsamic, malt vinegar....and even one made from 10-year-old Banyuls!!!

Who knew? (well, out front anyway, apparently lots of people in the back of the house knew)

Somewhat related is the fact the "Salt 'N Vinegar" flavored potato chips contain no vinegar. The ingredients list malic acid.

Hmm.

The thing that makes vinegar taste like vinegar is acetic acid, which is highly volatile. I suppose if you were to dry out real vinegar at room temperature, you'd get a crystalline residue that trapped enough residual acetic acid to be vinegary.

"Who knew?"

Who cares?

Sorry, but I don't see the point. If you want a dash of vinegar flavor, then sprinke on a dash of vinegar and be done with it. The evaporation, concentration, and crystallization process can only end up losing some of the more volatile and delicate flavor elements of the original vinegar.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Interesting. Didn't know about this. But I actually was thinking about this just a week or so ago when I bought a cup of cream of mushroom soup to go at a local restaurant. Sipping away alone on the long drive home, I was trying to put my finger on the source of the soup's unexpected sour flavor. It was vinegary, but it was more like the fake vinegar taste of flavored potato chips. which reminded me a bit of the fake sour taste of various potato chip flavoring. I couldn't fathom why the cook decided that this was a cool thing to add to mushroom soup--now I know. Because it's trendy.

Paul, very often the salts of acetic acid, which are not volatile, are combined with a nonvolatile acid (like malic) to give the combination of acetic flavor and the proper acidity in the powder.

Paul, very often the salts of acetic acid, which are not volatile, are combined with a nonvolatile acid (like malic) to give the combination of acetic flavor and the proper acidity in the powder.

Sure, but why bother, when one can just add real vinegar and be done with it?

I still don't see the point.

-Paul W.

It depends on the product. Powdered can give that flavor/tang without sogging things.

Convenience, efficiency, compact storage, pre-prep. Hard to pour vinegar over a pastry. Difficult to make a solid or semi-solid from a liquid. Hard to do a dry rub with a wet vinegar.

I don't have the book here, but in Heat, he talked about powdered something being like gold...jog my memory, guys, what was it he had to sneak in with...

b

Cocaine.

Welll....I'm not saying it WASN"T there, but I just Know I would have remembered if he was talking cocaine...not a big italian export, either, IIRC.

javascript:emoticon(':lol:')
Laughing

Cocaine.

I think that was Bourdain's book, wasn't it?

I dunno, I've tried to block that awful thing out of my mind. The book, that is.