Here's everything worth knowing about red vinegar and how to pick it, what it is, how to store it, and what to use instead, plus 11 recipes to cook tonight.

What is red vinegar?

Red vinegar is not one single product. When a recipe just says red vinegar, it almost always means one of two things, and which one matters for the dish.

Most of the time, especially in Western recipes, red vinegar is shorthand for red wine vinegar, the sharp, fruity vinegar made from red wine. In Chinese cooking, red vinegar usually means Chinese red rice vinegar, a milder, slightly sweet-tart vinegar fermented from rice and colored a translucent red.

So before you cook, read the rest of the ingredient list. The cuisine tells you which one was meant.

Which One Does Your Recipe Mean?

If the dish is a vinaigrette or a braise from a European or American source, reach for red wine vinegar. That is the intent in a Mild Fresh Salsa, a Green Lentil Soup, or Martha's Vineyard Raspberry Chicken, where you want a clean, sharp acidity.

If the dish is Chinese, especially a Cantonese soup or dipping sauce, it usually means red rice vinegar. Its gentle, faintly sweet tang is what finishes a bowl like Ken's Hot-And-Sour Soup or seasons Spicy Shrimp without the harsh bite of a wine vinegar.

When a recipe is vague and you cannot tell, red wine vinegar is the safer default in a Western kitchen, since it is the more common pantry bottle.

How to Use and Substitute

Red wine vinegar belongs in dressings and marinades, and in any dish where its color and bite are welcome. Use it the way you would any wine vinegar, adding it late so the brightness survives.

Red rice vinegar is gentler and a touch sweet, used mostly as a finishing splash and in dipping sauces for seafood and dumplings. If you only have wine vinegar, soften it with a pinch of sugar and a little water to approximate the milder rice version.

To swap the other way, a good rice vinegar with a drop of soy sauce stands in for red rice vinegar's color and rounder flavor.

Buying and Storage

Buy the specific vinegar your recipe points to rather than a bottle simply labeled red vinegar, which is ambiguous. Red wine vinegar sits with the Western vinegars; red rice vinegar lives in the Asian aisle or a Chinese grocery.

Either keeps almost indefinitely in a cool, dark cupboard with the cap closed. Vinegar does not spoil, though a long-open bottle slowly loses its sharpest aroma, and harmless sediment is nothing to worry about.

Quick facts

In Chinese

红醋

British (UK) term

Red vinegar

en français

de vinaigre rouge

en español

vinagre rojo

Recipes using red vinegar

There are 11 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 11 recipes