Talking FACS
Host: Dr. Jennifer Hunter, Assistant Director for Family and Consumer Sciences Extension, University of Kentucky
Guest: Annhall Norris, Extension Specialist for Food Safety and Food Preservation
Episode 44, Season 2
0:00 Welcome to Talking FACS; what you need to know about family, food, finance and fitness. Hosted by the University of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program, our educators share research knowledge with individuals, families and communities to improve quality of life.
0:21 Dr. Jennifer Hunter: Hello and welcome to Talking FACS. This is your host, Dr. Jennifer Hunter, Assistant Director for Family Consumer Sciences Extension at the University of Kentucky.
Today I'm pleased to be joined by Annhall Norris, our Extension Specialist for Food Preservation. Welcome, Annhall.
0:36 Annhall Norris: Hi Jennifer. Thanks for having me.
0:38 Dr. Hunter: I appreciate you being with us today and today our topic is going to be all things vinegar. And I know that vinegar is really considered to be all-purpose; that you can use it for cooking and you could use it for cleaning.
And today, you're really going to help us understand how, I guess, maybe we should say it is the best ways to use vinegar and what it truly can and cannot be used for.
1:02 Annhall: Yes, that's exactly what I want to do today. And first, I want to start out by saying that as the food preservation specialists, we use vinegar all the time in preserving. It is what makes our cucumbers pickles. We use it to make the food safe as well as to give the food flavor.
So, we use it in preserving, to pickle our products, to make dale pickles, sweet pickles, even the bread and butter pickles have vinegar in them even though you don't really get that tart flavor.
One important thing about vinegar, when you're using it for preserving, is to make sure that it has 5 percent acidity. So, you'll notice when you go down that condiment aisle in the grocery store you'll see the salad dressings and the vinegars. You want to look at that label because vinegar will have different percentages of acidity and you want to make sure when you're preserving that you use 5 percent acidity.
1:55 Dr. Hunter: So, Annhall, sometimes I feel like on here I shouldn’t admit when I just learned something new, because I wonder like, “Does everybody out there already know that?” But I had no idea that there was different levels of acidity within vinegar. I just assumed vinegar was vinegar.
2:09 Annhall: We'll, there are and there's also different kinds of vinegar. So, you'll notice that you can find apple cider vinegar and sometimes that's maybe 3 or 4 percent acidity. And people might want to just drink that straight or dilute it and drink it for health benefits. I'm not sure that all of those health benefits are research based. But there are a lot of people that want to drink vinegar for health reasons.
You'll see vinegar in the larger containers in that aisle in the grocery store where you have your caning supplies. And that's pretty much the 5 percent vinegar. Sometimes you'll see it in the cleaning aisle. And a lot of times, that will be 8 percent vinegar. It's just has a higher percentage of acidity.
But you'll also find, in that condiment aisle, different kinds of vinegar like balsamic vinegar. Have you ever had that on a salad? That's my favorite vinegar.
2:58 Dr. Hunter: Yes definitely. And I did realize that there were different types; I just didn't think about different levels of acidity. And to be honest, I guess when I'm thinking of just buying vinegar, like I just buy the big jug of white vinegar, I guess. I guess that's what it would be. But now that you talk about it, we definitely do have balsamic in our house and we have apple cider vinegar in our house as well.
3:19 Annhall: So, when we get done with this podcast, go look at your label and somewhere down on the bottom, it'll have the percent acidity. You can just, for curiosity reasons, you can just see what those different types of vinegar is, where their acidity level is.
3:31 Dr. Hunter: Excellent. I'll definitely check it out. So, you mentioned about using vinegar for food preservation, and I guess that like the balsamic for salad dressing. Are there other uses of vinegar in just general cooking?
3:45 Annhall: Yes. You'll find that vinegar is a main ingredient in some of your marinade; whether you purchase the marinade off the shelf or you make it yourself.
And the reason for that is that acidity actually helps to tend to rise your meat. When you're soaking in that marinade, the acidity level can actually break down the proteins and make them meat more tender. So, the longer you soak it in that marinade the more breakdown and the more tender your meat will become.
Now, you don't want to just soak it in vinegar. You want to make sure that you put that vinegar in with other spices and maybe a little bit of oil, so that you're not just soaking it in that vinegar, because then you'll end up with that kind of tart vinegar free flavor in your meat. You really don't want that you want the flavor of the marinade.
4:29 Dr. Hunter: Excellent. So, and we said this at the very beginning that vinegar is really kind of thought of as like this all-purpose item that individuals have in their house. And I think we see quite a bit of information, especially maybe online and social media about using vinegar for cleaning. Can you share a little bit with us about the uses of the vinegar for cleaning and how we should and should not be using it?
4:51 Annhall: Yes, I wanted to end on that; talking about vinegar as an excellent cleaner. It's a good all-purpose cleaner. But I wanted to stress that it is not an EPA-level disinfectant. So, it's not going to kill your common household bacteria and viruses.
But it is a good cleaner. There are recipes online. You can find some at the American Cleaning Institute for a window cleaner. I use a little bit of vinegar and rubbing alcohol and water when I clean my windows. I also use that on my mirrors and to shine up my bathroom fixtures. So, it's a great cleaner.
It also removes lime and scale buildup. So, you can soak your showerheads in a vinegar water mixture to remove some of that calcium and lime build buildup. And then you can put it in your laundry.
5:38 Dr. Hunter: I was getting ready to ask that question about the washing machine.
5:41 Annhall: Yes, you can put it in there. My mom always told me a little bit of vinegar in your red load will keep the colors bright. I don't know if that's research-based or not, but I always put a little bit in my dark-colored clothes and I think that it keeps my kids’ clothes colored longer.
But what I'll tell you what it does do best is get that nasty smell out of kneepads. If you've ever had sports equipment that have that nasty sweaty smell after practice, you can soak your knee pads or whatever in a vinegar-water solution and it's a great deodorant riser. And then you can launder his usual or let them dry.
6:15 Dr. Hunter: Are there specific tips about adding the vinegar to your washing machine or to your load. Does it depend on the type of washing machine that you have? Do you put it in with the soap? Should it go in a special spot?
6:28 Annhall: I think that's dependent on your type of washer. I have an old-school washer that opens on the top. And I usually mix my vinegar and water in a solution and pour it in with the detergent and then put my clothes in.
But I think you might want to look at your -- You don't want to put it in with the fabric softener. You want it in with the wash. So, you might want to check the instructions on your machine on when to add.
6:50 Dr. Hunter: But I do the same thing that you do with my son's sweaty clothes that just kind of have that smell to them that maybe it is all teenagers have that smell. That I've put vinegar in with his clothes quite often.
Let's kind of go back and talk just a little bit more about vinegar for cleaning. So, things that we want to disinfect. So, if we're wiping down our kitchen countertops, that is probably not a time to use vinegar for cleaning?
7:21 Annhall: That's correct. You would want to clean with maybe detergent and water, your dish liquid and water. And then if you want to disinfect, you're going to want to use something that has an active ingredient that is not acetic acid, which is what vinegar is.
So, you would want to use one of those EPA disinfectants, which would include bleach, the active ingredient is sodium hydrochloride, or any of the things that you purchase in a grocery store. Their active ingredients are going to be ammonia chloride; it’s quaternary ammonia.
So, none of those type of disinfectants have acetic acid as their active ingredient. So, you don't want to use that as a disinfectant.
7:58 Dr. Hunter: I also want to circle back. You mentioned earlier about the American Cleaning Institute. Could you tell us a little bit about information that they may have available? And for our listeners, we will include the link to their website and our show notes, if that's something that they want to go back and reference.
8:15 Annhall: Yes, that website is a great resource. It will have cleaning tips as well as recommendations for laundry or cleaning your kitchen or cleaning your bathroom. They also have recommendations for disinfecting on that site as well. So, it's a great resource.
8:31 Dr. Hunter: Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today Annhall.
8:34 Annhall: Thanks Jennifer.
8:36 Thank you for listening to Talking FACS. We deliver programs focusing on nutrition, health, resource management, family development and civic engagement.
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