mother of vinegar

today i learned that if your vinegar has nasty, clumpy stuff in it and won't pour out of the bottle, it hasn't gone bad, but has formed "mother of vinegar", the stuff that you use to make more vinegar with. it's like a huge, gross, globular, boogery vinegar seed floating in your deliciously flavorful, not disgusting vinegar.

unfortunately, i learned this about an hour after i discovered my vinegar had spontaneously sprouted a mother (although at that point it was still an unknown entity) and dumped it vigorously down the drain without abandon.

i was minding my own business, getting ready to marinate my steaks in a yummy olive oil and balsamic vinegar marinade i was going to make from scratch, when i discovered that my vinegar did not want to part company with its bottle. there was the olive oil in the pyrex cooking dish, patiently awaiting its savory companion, and there i was, fighting with the fancy vinegar bottle we got from bed bath and beyond, trying desperately to just get it out. after only getting half of what i needed, i decided my fancy bottle may not be as fancy as i thought, and popped the lid off to try pouring it without the spout.

i wish the problem had been the bottle.

i'm standing there in my kitchen shaking and shaking this bottle and repressing a swear word or two because even with an open topped bottle, my vinegar still won't come out, which is just plain weird. and then, with one particularly violent and anger-induced shake of the bottle, out pops what can only be described as a large, balsamic booger, all up into my deliciously un-mothered olive oil. later, during my research of what the heck was going on with my vinegar, i read someone else describe their mother of vinegar as jellyfish-like, which i think is a fair representation. it was slimy, globby, chunky, slippy, slidey, mushy, boogery, and most of all, yucky. and it was sitting in my olive oil, thinking i was going to make it into marinade anyway. my immediate reaction was "wait. does vinegar even go bad?" and then "ew, get it off my counter". at which point i washed my half-made marinade, and the remaining contents of the bottle down. the. drain. it was difficult considering how big that mother was. she took up most of the remaining vinegar in the bottle. it was like she thought she owned the place.

if i had known what she was, however, the whole thing may have turned into a little science experiment. i could have thrown that mother into a jar, added some wine, and ended up with my own vinegar without having to buy any new stuff. cool, huh?

word to your mother.