The vinegars, and when to use which

Acid is needed everywhere. That is the whole point of this piece and the rest is detail.

Think about salt in a chocolate chip cookie. Nobody eats a cookie and tastes salt, but a cookie without it is flat and slightly wrong and you cannot say why. Acid does the same job in savory food, and far more often than most people use it. A braise, a pot of beans, a soup, a sauce that tastes finished but dull: nearly all of them want acid rather than more salt or more time.

And vinegar is the easy way to do it. Lemons go off, wine gets drunk, and both vary. A bottle of vinegar sits in the cupboard for a year, costs almost nothing, and delivers exactly the same thing every time. It is the most reliable ingredient on this list and the most underused.

The vinegars are not interchangeable, though, and the differences are larger than the shelf suggests. Swapping one for another does not make the same dish with a variation. It makes a different dish, which is sometimes exactly what you want.

I have not cooked my way through every one of these evenly, and the notes below are where I have landed rather than a ruling. Somebody who cooks more French food than I do would weight them differently.

The six worth keeping

Seasoned rice vinegar. Mild, already sweetened and salted. The one I reach for most. It lands rounder than anything else here, so it seasons and acidifies in one move, and it does not need sugar to balance it. Shaved brussels, potato salad, fluffing rice, most Asian-leaning dressings.

Plain rice vinegar. The same base without the sugar and salt. Cleaner, sharper, and it puts you in control. Use it when you want to season separately, or in a pickle where the sugar is already accounted for.

White distilled vinegar. Harsh, neutral, cheap, strong. Not a finishing vinegar. This is for pickling brines, where you want acid and nothing else, and for the caesar where the other flavors are loud enough to carry it.

Apple cider vinegar. Fruity, slightly sweet, a bit funky. Barbecue's vinegar. A spritz on a brisket, a sauce for pulled pork, a slaw meant to sit beside smoked meat.

Red wine vinegar. Sharp and tannic, with some of the wine still in it. Vinaigrettes for robust leaves, tomato salads, anything Mediterranean, deglazing a pan where the meat was red.

Balsamic. Sweet, thick, dark. Not really a vinegar for dressing so much as for finishing. It reduces well against heat, which is why it goes in at the end of the brussels with bacon rather than at the start.

Two more, if you cook a lot

White wine vinegar. Softer than red, cleaner than cider. Delicate vinaigrettes, fish, anything where red wine vinegar would bully the dish.

Sherry vinegar. Nutty and complex, and the one professional kitchens use more than home kitchens do. Expensive, worth it, and a splash improves almost any vinaigrette you were going to make with something else.

Swapping on purpose

Here is where it gets interesting. Changing the vinegar is the cheapest way to make a dish you already know into a dish you have not had.

• Potato salad with seasoned rice vinegar instead of cider goes rounder and slightly sweet. With sherry vinegar it goes savory and grown-up.
• Slaw with rice vinegar rather than cider stops being a barbecue slaw and starts being something you would put on a banh mi.
• A vinaigrette made with sherry rather than red wine is the single easiest upgrade in this list.
• Quick pickles with rice vinegar are milder and more Japanese; with distilled they are sharper and more American; with cider they taste of the South.
• Deglazing with balsamic rather than wine vinegar gives you sweetness and body, which suits pork and duck and overwhelms chicken.

The rule for swapping: match the strength first, then the character. Distilled and red wine are strong; rice and white wine are mild; balsamic is sweet and behaves differently from all of them. Swapping within a strength band usually works. Crossing bands means adjusting the quantity too.

Two things worth knowing

Acid is not just for salads. A splash of vinegar in a pot of beans, a braise, a soup, at the very end, does what salt cannot. If something tastes complete but dull, it almost always needs acid. This is the single most useful thing on this page: before you add more salt to something flat, try a teaspoon of vinegar.

Add it late. Vinegar cooked for an hour loses its edge and leaves only the sweetness behind. That is fine when you want it, as in a braise, and wrong when you wanted brightness. For brightness, off the heat.