Vinegar Powder
One of my roommates used to live in Toronto, and after going to the movies here in Boston she was complaining that they didn’t have salt and vinegar powder to sprinkle on the popcorn that is apparently ubiquitous up there. Immediately my brain started spinning and next thing you know I was looking up everything about vinegar powder. The varieties available, where you can buy it, and of course how to make it. I sort of regret becoming so obsessed with the idea, because there wasn’t exactly a specific guide or recipe out there. I tried a few things I saw that were similar to what I wanted, and after lots of trial and error I finally came up with a powder made from mostly vinegar.
The problem here was that this powder wasn’t exactly the punch you in the face vinegar kick that I know and love from modern day salt and vinegar chips. It was more the wimpy dull vinegar from chips that used to be popular 10 years ago. I’m not a scientist but I do know from years of cooking that the chemical that makes the vinegar flavor actually burns off at a temperature that is slightly below boiling. This is why when you boil vinegar it smells so crazy in your house (You might have recently smelled this smell dying Easter eggs). This is also why a balsamic reduction has a stronger “balsamic” flavor, but a mellower vinegar bite, and why a recipe tastes much different if you add the vinegar at the beginning or at the end. I think that the way they make this powder commercially is to reduce the liquid without actually heating it. I was thinking of trying this again by putting the liquid on a large sheet pan with a fan on it, but I don’t have a million hours to wait for it to reduce to one tenth its volume!
I started with baking soda and added vinegar to it in 1 cup increments until it stopped bubbling. It took about 15 cups of vinegar for ½ cup of baking soda.  Again, I don’t really know too much about the science, but this changes the chemical properties of the vinegar.  If you just boiled vinegar down without adding the baking soda, it would just boil away to nothingness.
Boil until it is 1/10th its size. It started to sort of crackle towards the end of the boiling. In one of the guides I read it said to do this in the microwave but I feel like the microwave would retain the smell for weeks. Also something is weird to me about nuking a pyrex full of liquid for 20 minutes. Thirdly, I did way more than they did so this wasn’t even feasible for me really.
As you can see in this picture, it starts to solidify right as you take it off the heat.
I bought maltodextrin for some of my earlier trials and I think it really helped this become a free flowing powder instead of some crystallized sort of chunks. Maltodextrin is weird stuff and I actually have a few ideas on how to use it again soon. The modern cooking style with chemicals like maltodextrin isn’t exactly my favorite thing to do in the kitchen, but I find it fun to experiment with stuff like this from time to time, and it’s always good to have a few tricks up your sleeve.
The quickly solidifying vinegar reduction is placed into a coffee filter lined with some maltodextrin, and a little more is sprinkled on top. I let this sit for another hour or so to dry and harden more.
Then I ground it in the food processor with a little more of the maltodextrin and some salt.
Poured it into a salt shaker and went to town!
I was very happy with the final texture of the powder. It wasn’t clumpy or rocky as I expected. This was a fun experience, and while I wish it didn’t take 3 or 4 tries, I was happy to learn a few things about vinegars, solutions, and maltodextrin. If you put some of this powder on your finger, it did in fact taste like vinegar, it just didn’t have that kick I was hoping for.
If I try this again and perfect it, I’ll post a recipe, but for now if you want vinegar powder, you should probably buy it.
I’m taking a long weekend this weekend. I’m probably on a megabus to some distant land as you are reading this, and then Monday is the Marathon here in Boston, which is probably the greatest holiday of the year! See you guys next week!
Wow! This is so cool! You could make salt and vinegar chips so easily with this.
You can get salt and vinger popcorn seasoning at Target in the popcorn aisle. Just in case someone wants some vinegar sprinkle action without all the work.
I didn’t see this at Target, maybe it’s a local thing, we live in Erie, PA.
13 years later Mandy has probably left deep indents in her chair from not being bothered to do a little work.
Sweet, dude!
Pretty awesome. Very science-y. I’d like to think I’ll try it sometime, but that boiling vinegar smell makes my lungs seize up. That and I’m hooked on sprinkling spaghetti seasoning or nutritional yeast on my popcorn.
Hey Dan!
I know this defeats the purpose but you can purchase it here 🙂
http://www.kernelseasons.com/shop_product_detail.php?pid=49
This would taste AHmazing on fries!
Hee hee. Nice salt shaker.
you might want to try experimenting with salt instead of the baking soda, or even “lite salt” which uses potassium instead of sodium. the crystals might form better. or not, i’m just saying it’s a worthwhile experiment
Just fyi the commercially available vinegar powders are spray dried to avoid the evaporation issues you mentioned. It will be very difficult to make an acidic vinegar powder via reduction.
I’m trying to make this right now. I’ve had vinegar boiling all afternoon. It’s down to 1/2 inch, starting to solidify on the walls of the pot. I poured it through a a coffee filter/strainer, and got no solidification in either the vinegar that went through or in the strainer. Nothing. So I’m heating it more, added a bit more baking soda and I’m waiting. Any suggestions?
Its just awesome. But what is the nutrition value in this item .please let me know .
Waw awesome….superlike
What actually happens is this: the acetic acid (that’s what makes vinegar sour) reacts with sodium bicarbonate (a compound that’s in baking soda) to form carbonic acid. It’s really a double replacement reaction. Carbonic acid is unstable, and it immediately falls apart into carbon dioxide and water. You do not end up with vinegar powder as you were thinking.
Sodium acetate
it just awesome but added maltodextrin with skimmed milkm,this ahmazing tastem.
Thanks for the technique! I can’t wait to make salt & vinegar popcorn!
Do you taste the baking soda at all? I’m looking for the perfect vinegar “kick”. I’d really like to make it on my own. The one guy mentioned salt instead… I may try this! Thanks for the experiment. Saved me from doing it…
Thanks so much for this! I need to make my own vinegar powder and must avoid corn maltodextrin. I will be able to use tapioca maltodextrin. Can’t wait!
Just an idea to make it have a bit of of a vinegar kick with citric acid?
Please make sure you use quality stainless steel cookware or a non-corrosive material to heat up the vinegar, NOT ALUMINUM, you don’t want to cook anything acidic (sour) on corrosive metal, or you will end up ingesting it.i
I know this is an old thread but figured it’s worth a try? I have been looking for a source of either powdered vinegar to buy or make for cleaning. I have very hard water and usually soak things in regular white vinegar and it works really well except for times when it seems it would be more effective and useful as a paste. Sort of like a scouring powder. Any ideas?
I really like this thread. Did a search about 3 years ago (2016 now) but all I could find were corporate industrial links full of gobbledygook!
Thanks!
I have made the salt many times. 2 part high acid Vinegar one part kosher salt ( I use Diamond crystal mostly) I put my convection oven @175 or the lowest it goes, salt and vinegar stirred in deep hotel pan, open in the oven over night and part of the next day. I then leave it out uncovered on top of my ovens for an additional day, dries pretty quick, and then the food processor to make a fine powder for Chips, fries, nuts, and sprinkling. =)
Do u think this will work well on vinager chicken wings
I don’t think it is worth making this for wings. You should make a vinegar sauce instead.
Although the author seems to shun modernist cooking he’s provided an excellent example of it. Dry vinegar is part of a “perfect french fry” regimen. It doesn’t cause the fries t go soggy and if a vinegar taste is what you like this is what you want. make this and make some thrice cooked fries. Use it instead of the liquid variant and you’ll have the vinegary flavor ( and cut of oil taste ) that many folks want but the fries stay crisp.
This was the funnest recipy to follow in 48 years!
Not surprising that vinegar taste is weak, since the typical food dry vinegar is a 1:1 molar ratio (82:60 wt ratio) of sodium acetate and acetic acid..The amount of vinegar to react with baking soda to make sodium acetate is described by 1/2 cup baking soda and 15 cups white or distilled vinegar of 5% strength acetic acid. This is confirmed the fact that carbonic dioxide no longer bubbles off at 15 cups…Now just add 15 more cups vinegar before boiling down ;-).. It of course would make more sense to boil down the sodium acetate solution, and while heating and stirring, add remaining extra vinegar a cup or a drizzle at a time, reducing volume on the stove, and adding, heating and reducing until all of the additional 15 cups of vinegar has been added and reduced by heat. Ratios being what they are, try a smaller batch size, and use the principle that the volume of vinegar ( works with any type or strength ) that will no longer bubble when added to the baking soda, needs to be doubled in the end to get a sodium acetate:acetic acid to be dried and carried by the maltodextrin..
BTW use glass as much as possible, and if you add common salt or light salt (both contain chloride), avoid even stainless steel as acid chloride solutions attack and corrode stainless steel and the greenish nickle salts in your vinegar powder will not be a positive addition!
How much powder does this make? the 15L of vinegar
Try starting with Glacial Acetic Acid. Be careful
how much maltodextrin you use??
I seriously thought this was a joke recipe . I asked my Google nest mini for the recipe. it found this site and told me the ingredients were pee..
You need to add malic acid to get the flavor you are looking for.
Nearly a decade late here, but here goes anyway. A big part of the “kick” you want, the tangy/tart/sour aspect, comes from the acid in the vinegar. By adding baking soda (a base) you are neutralizing the acid and thus removing your “kick”. You either need to find a method that forgoes the baking soda, or you need to re-introduce some acid into the end product, as some have suggested here with malic or acetic acid (the two most common acids to naturally develop in vinegar)
I dont have the time to do this shit so might as well get some from the fgh
In case anyones wondering, the reason why it goes to 1/10th of it’s size is because 1/10 is equal to 10%. Most white vinegars are made with 5-10% acetic acid and the rest is water.
Can’t you just dehydrate the vinegar in a dehydrator?