Chive flower vinegar is a beautiful way to preserve the flowering tops of your chive plants. Infusing the fresh flavour of chive flowers in apple cider vinegar provides a flavoursome base for your next salad dressing vinaigrette.

herbal infusion of chive flowers in vinegar

Ingredients Needed for Chive Flower Vinegar:

This is a truly simple recipe; you only need two main ingredients – fresh chive flowers and raw apple cider vinegar. You can always add other fresh herbs to the mix if you would like a more complex flavour but you may lose the beautiful purple pink colour of the vinegar if you do so.

Chive Flowers

Chives! These are one of my most favourite culinary herbs to grow in my garden. A wonderful perennial crop from the Allium family, it produces fine stalk-like leaves.

These are harvested for their subtle, delicate onion flavour. The flavour less sharp and pungent than raw onions or garlic which makes them suitable to be used fresh and raw in a range of dishes.

I use chives in my stock base for soups and stews, to finish off grilled vegetables, and stirred through mashed potatoes. Chives are also excellent mixed into coconut yogurt for a dipping sauce with cucumber sticks.

My growing zone is 10A, which means the lowest frost temperatures are only around -1.1 degrees Celsius. Most herbs I can grow all year round, with the exception of basil. With these warm growing conditions, I have several clumps of chives scattered about my garden growing on for harvesting as required.

In spring time, my chive plants produced many wonderful purple-pink flowers which the bees loved. I thought why not preserve the fresh flavour of spring. So I went about harvesting the flower tops and infusing them in vinegar.

Now we can enjoy the flavour of fresh chives in a salad dressing vinaigrette. We patiently wait for the crops to grow on so we can make many more dishes with chives again soon.

Apple Cider Vinegar

You can use any type of vinegar you have available to make this. I prefer using raw apple cider vinegar exclusively.

Raw apple cider vinegar has been noted for its many health benefits, both traditionally and in health practices today. For example, traditionally a teaspoon of vinegar is served in a glass of water for treating nausea and indigestion. It may also be suitable for lowering the pH of stomach acid to aid in reflux.

There is also some preliminary research to suggest apple cider vinegar assisting with blood sugar regulation and aiding in weight loss.

In the kitchen, I use apple cider vinegar for a range of applications. I like it in baked goods for rising and adding acidity to savoury dishes too if I am out of lemons. It also works great as a salad dressing base with olive oil and a dash of mustard and honey.

infused chive flowers in glass jar of vinegar

Making the Chive Flower Vinegar Infusion

Once you have assembled your fresh chive flowers and apple cider vinegar, all you need is a clean glass jar with a lid.

Ensure your chive flowers are clean and dry and free from any debris or garden bugs. You can rinse them off gently under cool water and leave them to air dry for an hour if required.

Place your chive flowers into your glass jar and fill up to the brim with vinegar. Screw on the jar lid and leave to infuse in a cool dark area for 2-3 days. During this time the beautiful purple colour from the flowers will infuse into the vinegar, turning the vinegar a wonderful pink-purple colour.

Drain off the chive flowers using a sieve. Pour the chive flower vinegar into a glass bottle or jar with a lid and store at room temperature out of direct sunlight. Use as you would normally as a base for a vinaigrette in a fresh leafy green salad.

draining off chive flowers from herbal vinegar

chive flowers infusing in apple cider vinegar

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