Balsamic loves. It loves berries. It love steak. It loves a tangle of creamy, caramelized onions. It loves bread and oil. It loves cheese. It loves even the bitterest greens. Balsamic plays well with others almost anywhere you put it. Pull down your bottle (whether you're someone who reaches for it daily or someone who has to be reminded about balsamic, like me), assess the contents of your fridge and pantry, and be reminded. Here are a few ideas to get you going:
- Make your shallots (or chopped onions) sing by tossing them with a bit of vinegar and olive oil and roasting them until melting.
- Roast a mess off chopped strawberries and rhubarb (or nearly any other fruit) with a splash of balsamic vinegar.
- Or cook them into a jammy pile on the stove and swirl them into a cake.
- Or purée them and fold through an ice cream base.
- You can also simply drizzle it over a fat scoop of vanilla ice cream—plain or in a balsamic-butterscotch sauce.
- Deepen a tapenade, like this fig-olive one, with a tablespoon of balsamic.
- Add a glug of balsamic to a shrub (especially a berry shrub). Too much balsamic will overwhelm the fruit here, so use a splash of it in tandem with another, less intense vinegar (like white wine vinegar).
- Most vinaigrettes are happy spiked with balsamic. Add a bit of jam to sweeten the dressing and amp the fruitiness.
- Dress a flank steak simply with balsamic (and lots of black pepper).
- Or stir it into brown butter and use that to dress your steak (or your baked cheese, or your roasted vegetables, or your eggs).
You have a few tablespoons left in a bottle of balsamic. What do you do with it? Tell us in the comments.
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