Orange Vinegar

It is getting close to Estrella time for me (estrellawar.org), which means I'm starting to look at doing some food prep. One of the things I make every year is a drink called sekanjabin. I did a post on that one a few years ago, here: http://tangibledaydreams.blogspot.com/2010/01/sekanjabin-and-dried-fruit.html . It is a syrup made of vinegar, honey, mint, and water. The syrup lasts unrefrigerated for quite some time. To drink, you mix one part syrup with about 8 parts water, and serve it either chilled or hot.

Well, it is also orange harvest time here, and I was squeezing some oranges for juice today. I got to thinking...and put a cup of white vinegar aside with some orange peels and rosemary in it. I'll let it sit for a week or two, strain out the solids, and then put it in a spray bottle about half and half with water. I use vinegar water for cleaning, and I think the orange oils (cleaning) and rosemary (disinfectant) will add a nice punch to the home made cleaner. It should smell better, too.

And then as I was putting that on the pantry shelf to do its thing, I got to thinking about the upcoming batch of sekanjabin. And wouldn't it be good if I used orange infused vinegar to make it with? I had to try it. So, here is how I'm making the orange vinegar:

First I went and picked 8 oranges.

I brought them in and gave them a good washing, to get air born whatever off of the skins.

Then I used a potato peeler to take just the orange outer layer of peel off of the orange.

I had a bottle of apple cider vinegar with just over 2 cups left in it, which is what I need for the sekanjabin recipe. I popped the peels right into the bottle.

I juiced the oranges, of course. Fresh squeezed is soooo much better than store bought. The oranges were a little more slippery now that the outer zest was off of them. But it was easier to deal with that than to try to cut and juice them first, and then take the peeler to the rind.

8 oranges worth of zest was probably excessive, but I didn't want to waste what I had picked. At this point, I'll leave it a few weeks, and then strain out the solids and see what I'm left with.

To be continued.