Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Switchel

I have a feeling this is going to be a post about something that nobody likes but me, but I'm okay with that. It starts, as so many things do, with me reading Laura Ingalls as a kid. I remember being mildly intrigued by this line from The Long Winter:
"Ma had sent them ginger-water. She had sweetened the cool well-water with sugar, flavored it with vinegar, and put in plenty of ginger to warm their stomachs so they could drink till they were not thirsty. Ginger-water would not make them sick, as plain cold water would when they were so hot."

Somewhere in the intervening years, I read about switchel, the "haymakers' punch" of sweetened vinegar water, and when I spied that bottle of Bragg's vinegar drink at a fancy bodega last weekend, I snatched it up. I loved it, though I think it's fair to say that Jenn was grossed out — willing to give it a try until she smelled it. The only listed ingredients were water, cider vinegar, and honey, all things I had on hand at home, so I've been playing around with it all week and finally hit on the proportions that taste good to me. I like the flavor of honey, but have been using maple syrup simply because it's easier to stir into cold water.

The ginger tea I mention here is something I make a batch of weekly-ish. I make it strong enough that I can't drink it on its own, so it's more like ginger concentrate. It's good mixed with water or seltzer or heated up with honey and lemon. Just slice a large piece of ginger fairly thinly into a saucepan, fill the pan with water, bring it to a boil, cover and let it cool to room temperature, then strain into clean bottles and store in the fridge. My current favorite cooking/drinking white wine that I can get close to home for under $10 (it's a Chilean sauvingnon blanc with a greenish label and is on the bottom shelf of the wine store; that's all I know about it) comes in screw-top bottles, which are really handy for this kind of thing.

Switchel
2 T. maple syrup
4 T. Bragg's cider vinegar
very strong ginger tea
water
Mix the maple syrup and vinegar in a pint glass. Fill glass roughly halfway with ginger tea and the rest of the way with water. Stir.

3 comments:

Jenn and Adam said...

Man, that stuff was rough. I'm glad you're happy with it, but whoa, it was definitely not my bag.

To anyone else out there who loves vinegar - you will love this. Personally, I had to back away slowly. And I love pickles.

Gina said...

I used to take a "shot" of an apple cider vinegar every morning, but I've fallen out of the habit. This could be just the thing to get me back into the habit.

I love ginger tea, and this sounds like something I would love.

Troop 2440 said...

I was just reading about switchel in my Wild Fermentation book. Sounds like the health benefits are amazing.

I also got inspired from Little House books. I read Farmer Boy where they hunted for winterberries in the snow and enjoyed their wintergreen flavor (what toothpaste and all wintergreen flavoring was made from before artificial flavorings came along). I just planted a wintergreen bush in my garden this spring. Oh, and I planted 2 elderberry bushes last spring!