Strawberry Basil Shrub (aka, the Drinking Vinegar Craze)

Drinking vinegars, or shrubs, are all the rage these days. Shrubs are fruit infused vingegars sweetened with sugar, and they are delicious mixed with some soda water or any given liquor.

Shrubs have been around on the fancy-cocktail circuit for a while (I had a shrub cocktail at Nopa in San Franciso in 2009, and they're making a splash at Andy Ricker's Thai street food mecca Pok Pok in Portland, Oregon.  His "Pok Pok Som Drinking Vinegars" are so popular that he's producing them for sale outside of his restaurant, and they're now available at Weiland's in Clintonville.  On the local blog scene, last week the lovely Rachel Tayse chronicled her creation of a rhubarb shrub on her blog Hounds in the Kitchen.  You should check it out.

Over at the Ham Sandwich HQ, I had a dozen pounds of strawberries, courtesy of a seriously focused hour of picking at Schacht Family Farms last Saturday.   My freezer is not big enough for twelve pounds of frozen strawberries, so I decided to jump on the shrub-wagon and make my own.

The recipe I followed was from last fall's issue of Edible Grand Traverse, but really, there's not much in the way of a recipe with shrubs.  I put a cup or two of chopped strawberries and a couple basil leaves in a clean, sterile mason jar, and heated up a half and half mix of white and apple cider vinegar, just until it came to a light simmer.

I poured the hot vinegar over the fruit, covered the jars with parchment paper and sealed with the rings.  A gentle shake, and then I stuck them in the bottom of the pantry and waited.  Every day or so for about a week I gave them a little jostle and when the strawberries looked sapped of their color and the vinegar had a fruity aroma, I strained the solids out (I recommend a paper towel in a mesh strainer), then added enough sugar for a not-quite 1:1 ratio of vinegar to sugar (it's to your taste, really) and heated the vinegar and sugar until the sugar dissolved.

I let the shrub cool, then poured it into clean, sterile jars (or fancy bottles, as seen here), and had a few ounces over some ice, topped off with some soda water.  It's sweet, tart, fruity, and just has a hint of the herbal basil.  It's a perfect refreshing beverage for the summer. Also, the color is really something else.  

You can experiment with just about any fruit....the folks at Pok Pok are making it with tamarind, lychee, pomegranate, apple, and whatever else is in season...blackberry would be phenomenal!   As an added bonus, vinegar is good for you, so you can feel better about pouring yourself a strawberry-basil shrub and vodka cocktail....cheers!