Monday, March 12, 2012

Coconut vinegar? Am I allergic to that?

Here is an interesting secret ingredient in some baked goods: Coconut vinegar.
What a weird concept. Take some coconut water and make vinegar out of it. Now, I'm not an expert on vinegar, but this stuff is not distilled, so it has to contain some sort of coconut-ness or else why would people bother choosing it over other types of vinegar?
Supposedly, like all these other coconut ingredients, it contains no proteins so you technically can't be allergic to it.
So what did I do? I really wanted to try some of these gluten free hamburger buns made by a San Antonio bakery called the "Little Aussie." The problem was, they had coconut vinegar as practically the last ingredient. So, by the time I ate it with the yummiest, biggest bison burger in the world at a restaurant called "The Cove", there was very little coconut I was actually eating.

The good news is, not only did I live, but I had no reaction whatsoever. No mouth itching, no hives, no face swelling. So. . . I am a human guinea pig I guess, and this stuff might possibly be harmless to the coconut allergic crowd, at least in tiny amounts.