Tarragon Vinegar

Fresh tarragon from the garden

After several failed attempts to grow tarragon, I was not about to waste a single leaf of this herb when it finally began to thrive in our garden beds.  I added it to salmon and chicken, salads, and finally to vinegar at the end of the season.

French tarragon is the variety most used in cooking.  In Asia, this herb is used to flavor sodas and in Europe to scent pastries.

Since this was our first attempt at making tarragon vinegar, we decided to keep it simple.  We sterilized canning jars, packed each jar with fresh tarragon, then added vinegars.  After screwing on the lids, we put them away on the pantry shelf for a few weeks before using.   Some vinegar recipes we looked at suggested heating or cooking the mixture but we decided not to follow that path.


We used three different vinegars, a different one in each jar.  Champagne vinegar
is on the left, rice wine vinegar is in the middle, and white wine
vinegar is on the right.  They have very different outcomes.

The champagne vinegar tarragon mix offered the mildest overall taste.  The champagne vinegar is not very potent and doesn't overpower the tarragon.  Rice wine vinegar and fresh tarragon produced the strongest tarragon flavor and a very pleasant seasoned vinegar taste.  The white wine vinegar mixture had the strongest acid overtones which somewhat masked the lovely fresh tarragon.



Salad vinaigrette (French style) and Bernaise sauce are two
favourite uses of the above vinegars.

To be fair, we eyeballed the amount of tarragon to vinegar ratio.  I used the white wine vinegar tarragon mix to make Bernaise sauce over the holidays and it worked just fine.  Afterwards I replenished the vinegar to the jar.  The smell in these jars is amazing if you are a tarragon fan.

Experiment and Enjoy

- Kim Fielding