These Apple Cider Vinegar Recipes Spotlight the Versatility of This Classic American Condiment

The purported health benefits of apple cider vinegar, taken as a therapeutic spoonful, are well publicized. But we also happen to like the flavor of apple cider vinegar: As a pantry staple, it has a lot to offer. Here, we've gathered our best apple cider vinegar recipes to demonstrate that this sour condiment is so much more than medicine. When pondering how to use vinegar in recipes, salad dressing is often the first (and only) thought, and while it is certainly an outstanding source of fruity tartness in a vinaigrette, it's high time you consider the other ways to put it to good use. Quick pickles are a sexier version of salad (any crisp vegetable lives to be quick-pickled)—biting into a raw carrot, sweetly sour, gives you all the benefits of both the vegetable and the vinegar.

If you're looking to prepare something other than a salad, try reducing apple cider vinegar, which reveals beneath its familiar tartness a syrupy center. This shape-shifting quality makes it a foil for meats like fatty cuts of pork, duck, and lamb. The same sweet-and-sour character complements roasted vegetables. In addition to making a wonderful sauce, apple cider vinegar is also a cornerstone in classic condiments, like barbecue sauce and hot sauce—its sharpness offers necessary contrast for sweetness and heat. It also plays a quieter role, unobtrusively adding flavor to important elements of a dish, like stuffings where acid is called on to keep richness in check.

In drinks, no-alcohol apple cider vinegar is delicious. It's an essential ingredient in all kinds of switchels, shrubs, and fireside ciders.

Barbecue Chicken

Pass the paper napkins. Finger-licking barbecue chicken relies on that holy trinity of ketchup, sugar, and vinegar. The foundation of apple cider vinegar offsets the sweetness and caramelizes in heat, contributing to the defining stickiness that is essential to good barbecue.

Turmeric and Maple Green Tea

In this cup of antioxidant green tea goodness, the flavor of fresh turmeric is an earthy base for sharp apple cider vinegar and mellow maple syrup.

Hot Red-Pepper Relish

You will never run out of ways to deploy this homemade hot sauce, fiery with chiles, sweet with sugar, and given an acerbic edge by apple cider vinegar.

Vegan Chocolate Cake

Adding apple cider vinegar to your vegan cake helps fluff it up in the absence of egg. (It doesn't hurt that the flavor complements chocolate exceptionally well.)

Roasted Kohlrabi with Buttered Hazelnuts

A comforting bowl of roasted kohlrabi is topped with crunchy hazelnuts tossed in a maple syrup and apple cider vinegar glaze that's fragrant with thyme.

Roasted Sausages with Cabbage and Squash

An apple cider vinegar and mustard vinaigrette drizzled over piping hot sausages and caramelized vegetables adds a surprising and very welcome pop to this simple sheet-pan supper.

Tomato-Jam Pinwheels

The straightforward sweetness of cooked cherry tomatoes is emphasized by sugar and complemented by the pungency of apple cider vinegar in these addictive little pinwheels.

Herbed Celery-Potato Salad

The appealing mealiness of potatoes is the perfect sponge for the sharpness of apple cider vinegar and scallions, while fresh herbs provide bright aromatics in this easy summer side.

Test Kitchen's Favorite Fire-Cider Tonic

Building layers of soothing flavor in a jar of fire-cider tonic is half the fun. Apple cider vinegar and honey are the base for this alchemy, which packs a sincere punch, featuring fresh ginger and garlic, as well and hot peppers and horseradish. Bugs begone!

Rye-Whiskey Switchels

The talk of your next gathering will be this large-batch switchel, where dark sorghum syrup sweetens the vibrant apple cider vinegar base, and rye whiskey creates a warm glow.

Quick-Pickled Corn

This spicy apple cider vinegar bath is fantastic for quick-pickling photogenic rounds of corn, but try it on batons of carrots and beets, celery stalks, sliced cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and florets of raw cauliflower. It even works with peeled garlic cloves! It may change your salad-making life.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts, Pomegranate, and Cider Reduction

Familiar roasted Brussels sprouts are given a makeover in a reduction that combines apple cider and apple cider vinegar. This glaze is delicious with the nutty little cabbages, while juicy pomegranate seeds spike the plate with color.

DIY Vinaigrette

Everyone needs a go-to vinaigrette. Our version combines apple cider vinegar, a dash of maple syrup, rich Dijon mustard and good olive oil. This jarful will dress several salads and keeps well in the fridge.