From an accessibility standpoint, folkloric tinctures are the best thing ever. There’s no need for measuring and weighing and doing arithmetic–and you don’t have to study the intricacies of weight-to-volume tinctures to make something truly fabulous. Provided the plants you’re tincturing aren’t poisonous in any dose, you’re good to let your kitchen scale gather dust while you experiment to your heart’s content. The below recipe focuses on vinegar infusions, but you can just as easily do this with alcohol for a folkloric tincture!
Making Herbal Infused Vinegar
This is my favorite method for making infused vinegars: folkloric tinctures using vinegar instead of alcohol. I have great results that yield strong, complex medicines.
Infused Vinegar Uses
Infused vinegars offer a versatile and potent way to work medicinal herbs into your daily routine. They can be used as a flavorful addition to salad dressings and marinades, or simply taken by the tablespoon as a remedy. Choosing the right herbs for your infused vinegar can significantly impact its flavor and medicinal properties. Look for things that smell good and taste good, as well as having medicinal benefits!
Medicinally, infused vinegars are an effective remedy for many ailments. High quality raw vinegar offers a probiotic and enzyme-rich gut tonic on its own, no matter what herbs you add to it.
Vinegar is a powerhouse at extracting healthy minerals from herbs, including calcium, iron, and magnesium that naturally occur in plants like nettles, raspberry, oatstraw, chickweed, red clover, and alfalfa. Infused vinegars of mineral-rich herbs like nettles, raspberry, yellow dock, and burdock are powerful remedies for conditions where minerals are depleted like anemia and osteoporosis.
Vinegar also does a wonderful job extracting healthy soluble fiber (the “heart healthy” kind that helps metabolize cholesterol and hormones) from fiber-rich roots such as burdock, marshmallow, and elecampane.
Herbs like thyme, sage, and oregano are excellent choices due to their robust flavors and health benefits, including antimicrobial, digestive, and antioxidant properties.
Vinegar infused with herbs like garlic and thyme can help boost the immune system and fight off colds–check out fire cider for more immune-boosting vinegar ideas!
Rosemary infused vinegar is a delightful and versatile preparation that combines the robust, aromatic qualities of rosemary with the tangy acidity of vinegar. This infusion is not only a culinary delight, perfect for adding depth to salad dressings, marinades, and sauces, but also offers numerous medicinal benefits. Rosemary is known for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties, making this infused vinegar a great choice for boosting immune health and improving digestion. Additionally, rosemary infused vinegar can be used as a hair rinse to promote scalp health and add shine to your hair, or as a refreshing facial toner to invigorate the skin. With its myriad of uses, rosemary infused vinegar is a must-have in any herbalist’s kitchen.
Experiment with combinations: lavender and lemon balm for a calming infusion; basil and garlic for an immune-boosting blend. Get creative and make delicious, custom-blended remedies!
Creative Culinary Uses for Herbal Vinegars
Beyond their medicinal uses, herb infused vinegars can elevate your culinary creations–and turn them into medicinal foods! Use them to add a burst of flavor AND medicine to homemade salad dressings, marinades, soups, and sauces. They can also be drizzled over roasted vegetables, used to deglaze pans for flavorful sauces, or mixed into beverages for a zesty twist. Experimenting with different herb combinations can inspire new recipes and enhance your cooking with the added benefits of herbal remedies.
These versatile concoctions are tasty ingredients to meals, PLUS they are easy to make and easy to use everyday to maintain health and well-being.
Folkloric Tinctures Have A Downside
Folkloric tinctures are great. That being said, if your plants are poisonous at all, you could potentially make someone really sick with a folkloric tincture–so be sure your medicines are benign. Dose-dependent medicines should not be made into folkloric tinctures because there’s no way to be sure of the medicine’s strength and concentration. Also, you can’t replicate the medicine from batch to batch. So, with those warnings in mind, here follows a basic recipe for a basic tincture.
Basic Recipe for Herbal Infused Vinegars & Folkloric Tinctures
- Fill a glass jar with finely chopped herbs
- Cover with the alcohol, vinegar, or glycerine of your choice
- Clearly label with plant, date, moon phase, harvest location, etc. Cover label with packing tape!
- Let sit for 6 weeks or more in a cool, dark place, shaking regularly
- Strain plant matter out of tincture and squeeze strained herbs between 2 plates or in a potato ricer to extract the last of the tincture
- Store in a clearly labeled glass jar or bottle in a cool, dark place
Infused vinegars typically have a long shelf life, but it’s wise to check for any signs of mold or off smells before use.
This article is part of the series “Basic Recipes for Kitchen Witches,” which is in response to students’ requests for me to post recipes online. The goal of these articles is to give you the how-to-ness, the essential mechanics of creation, as a basis for your own future creativity. You can let your little light shine all on your own from there.