Fire Cider: Stoking the Fires Within!

It seems like every green-living enthusiast has a favorite fire cider recipe, so I decided that its time to experiment with my own! Today I gathered the necessary ingredients and put together my very first homemade fire cider infusion. Its a really simple process that anyone can do. Here are the ingredients I used:

1 large orange
1 lemon
5 disks of horseradish*
1/4 extra large onion
1 bulb of garlic
2 small jalapenos
4 rosemary sprigs
3 tablespoons turmeric root powder
3 tablespoons of wineberry seeds and pulp*
10 tablespoons raw honey
32 ounces raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar

I specifically left ginger out of my recipe even though it's almost always used in fire ciders. It typically doesn't agree with me and I find that it tastes exactly like soap.

To make the fire cider, I simply cut up all of the ingredients and dived them equally into two quart-sized mason jars (they just barely fit!)

In processing the horseradish, I peeled the root and then cut it into centimeter thick disks. Five of those disks was the amount I ended up using in this batch, but you can adjust that to taste. I also included some leftover wineberry material to give the cider some wildcrafted flavor. You can skip this ingredient if you don't have it on hand, or simply substitute it with other local berries of choice, like elderberries or staghorn stumac drupes.

One thing to keep in mind when making apple cider vinegar infusions in mason jars is that the vinegar acid can corrode the metal lid. To solve this problem, cut a square of wax paper and put it over the top before screwing the lid on tightly.

Let your infusion brew for at least two weeks, storing it in a cool, dry place and shaking it daily. When the time is right, strain out all of the plant material and store the fire cider in bottles of your choice. Take 1 tablespoon in water first thing in the morning to stoke your inner furnace or before eating a big dinner to kick-start your metabolism.