re: Using vinegar in cooking

Use it any time you want to brighten up a flavor, especially useful at the end of cooking things that take a long time to cook and might have it's flavors flattened and beaten up. Soups, stews, sauces, etc. I can't really think of a time when it works well with a roux based dish, but that may just be me.

It's also useful for cutting a dish that has a heavy fat or sweet flavor component that you want to bring something else to. The potato salad mentioned above is a good example of something with a lot of fat that benefits from a little vinegar to cut it. Mustard in potato salad? Yep. Vinegar. Mayo based cole slaws with dried fruits in them are an EXCELLENT example of this idea as well. Balsamic vinegar drizzled on ice cream is another excellent example of the fat/sweet/vinegar interplay. Fats and sweets tend to play well with vinegars.

It's also really good on almost any vegetable or in smothered vegetable dishes. Just think vinaigrette and Italian salad dressings: lots of vinegar. With some of the vinegars, you can even play around with texture and temperature. I've done romaine lettuce cut in half and grilled flat side down with frozen shaved red wine vinegar as a topping. Kind of a twist on the salad. I think I got that from Good Eats. I've also seen it done with balsamic drizzled lightly on the grilled lettuce.

Just remember that with vinegars, a little little tends to go a LONG way. Use it in small amounts as you're getting used to adding it to a dish to prevent ruining it. Also remember that there are many different types of vinegar with many different flavor profiles and acidities that will each work best with a particular dish or application.

I love vinegar. I love tangy food. Buffalo wings, Caesar dressing (or any of a multitude of oil & vinegar based salad dressings), malt vinegar on my French fries. I use it in potato salad (the family recipe calls for Miracle Whip and yellow mustard so it's very tangy).

One thing I haven't done is to add a small amount to soups or other dishes that I don't want to be tangy, it's just supposed to brighten up the flavor a bit according to recommendations. I need to experiment with that.

I currently have bottles of red and white wine vinegar, rice wine vinegar, malt vinegar, plain white (for cleaning purposes as mentioned above) and apple cider vinegar. I use a 50/50 mix of apple juice and apple cider vinegar to spray large cuts of meat during a long smoke.