Hot, pungent, spicy, sweet, sour elixir with a punch. Sounds intriguing, right? Yet another way to take charge of your wellness with simple kitchen ingredients.
About 5 weeks ago we made a batch of fresh fire cider. Fire cider is a folk remedy and wellness tool that is simple, easy to make and perfect for keeping your system running well. It is essentially an infusion of apple cider vinegar with spices.
Many of the ingredients such as garlic, hot chilis, honey, etc. in fire cider are antibacterial or antimicrobial. Even better the hotness and spiciness of this elixir basically invigorates your system, heating you up, inducing you to sweat out any toxins or a cold/flu that may be trying to catch on. This recipe is based on Rosemary Gladstar’s fire cider and is pretty simple but you can really get creative and add different herbs and spices that call you. Fun food waste prevention tip – you can use over fermented kombucha that has gone to vinegar state as a substitute for the apple cider vinegar.
Ingredients
- 1/2 medium size onion chopped
- 1.5 inch piece of horseradish grated
- 2.5 inch piece of ginger grated
- 2 inch piece of turmeric grated
- 1 hot chili of choice diced
- 10 sprigs of thyme (or herb of choice)
- 10 cloves garlic diced
- 3 cups raw apple cider vinegar or vinegary plain kombucha (past prime drinking flavor)
- 1/4 cup raw honey (for use after 1 month infusion)
Instructions
- Prepare all the ingredients and mix into a half liter jar
- pour the apple cider vinegar over the top until about 0.5 inches are left at the top
- put on the lid and shake daily for a month, leaving in a cool, dry place to infuse
- in 1-2 months, strain the contents and squeeze out the juice from the soaked contents
- Mix in the honey
This was a great opportunity to use honey we harvested 2 weeks ago right here in California!
How to Use?
You can take it as a shot daily or at the onset of cold symptoms, in a warm tea, use in salad dressings, even mix into drinks…the possibilities are many. I prefer to take a small shot of it to keep my system healthy. Salud!
