You might associate fall with pumpkin or butternut squash recipes. But for a small but vocal minority, the item that best embodies the season is fire cider—a popular drink that not only incorporates autumnal ingredients, but also boosts your immune system during cold and flu season…or so its advocates say. Search “fire cider” on TikTok and you’ll find dozens upon dozens of videos of people brewing their own version, typically accompanied by a voiceover singing its praises. “The best thing that’s going to keep you from getting sick this winter is going to be fire cider,” one creator proclaims in an August 22 clip that has nearly 40,000 likes and more than 30,000 saves.
What is fire cider?
If you haven’t heard of the beverage before, let’s start by defining it. Simply put, fire cider is a concoction made from apple cider vinegar and various vegetables, herbs, and spices. While it typically contains onion, garlic, ginger, horseradish, and cayenne pepper (hence the “fire” in the name), the exact ingredient combination is infinitely tweak-able, so countless variations and spinoffs exist. Judging by the TikTok videos (and according to the Cleveland Clinic), turmeric, rosemary, lemons, oranges, and jalapeños or habaneros are commonly added as well.
Regardless of your preferred combo, making fire cider is about as easy as, well, pie: Just pack your preferred items into a glass jar, let the mixture steep for a few weeks, strain it through cheesecloth, and add a sweetener like honey as necessary. Traditionally, people drink fire cider in daily shots to shore up your body’s infection-fighting capabilities. (Not that this experience is anywhere near pleasant, as the pinched expressions on TikTok show. “Tastes like spicy rocket fuel… but keeps the sniffles away,” one caption cautions.)
Is fire cider good for you?
Of course, it’s always a smart idea to take claims like these with a grain of salt: Many “home remedies” and “herbal tonics” are more snake oil than miracle cure, after all. When I first came across fire cider videos on TikTok, some of the trad-life-esque terminology and language set off alarm bells in my brain. Instinctive skepticism aside, I also had food safety concerns about the brewing process.
Like I mentioned above, fire cider is made by steeping all the ingredients in a jar for several weeks in a cool, dark place—an approach that made me wonder about the risk for bacterial proliferation or mold growth. With all that stuff stewing away in a confined space that might not have been sufficiently cleaned beforehand, it seemed highly possible that the emerging potion could be a microbial breeding ground. So I reached out to an expert for her take: Is the final product safe to drink? And if so, will it have the promised health benefits? Or will it be as I feared—ineffective at best, and potentially harmful at worst?
“Individually, these ingredients are undeniably beneficial,” Anthea Levi, MS, RD, a Brooklyn-based health writer and founder of Alive+Well Nutrition, tells SELF of the aforementioned staples. “Apple cider vinegar contains blood sugar-balancing acetic acid, garlic is naturally antiviral, and ginger is a potent antiemetic that can also support healthy digestion.” What’s more, she adds, incorporating citrus fruits like lemons and oranges “also supplies vitamin C, a potent antioxidant that supports immune function by helping cells fight off pathogens.”
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