Salt and Vinegar Almonds

The flavor is good, however I think the execution needs some tweaking. If someone would have given me these without telling me what they were, I would never guess vinegar. All you can taste is the salt and a tiny hint of sweetness. If you want a true salt and vinegar taste, I'd use white vinegar instead of balsamic, and soak them in the vinegar before drying them in the oven. As written, these don't dry at all in 10 mins. They weren't dry in 30 either. I ended up putting them in the oven (they were oven ready on a baking sheet, after all) on low heat, 275F to dry for about 10-15 mins. There is also way too much vinegar mixture; you could easily get away with a third of it. If I were to make them again, I'd definitely soak them in vinegar first, then dry in the oven.

Made as written originally and these were okay but the execution needed tweaking. After I dumped the almonds in and turned off the stove I let them sit in the vinegar mixture 5 minutes in hopes of them soaking up some of the vinegar flavor. They were nowhere near dry in 10 minutes but I thought that was my fault for letting them sit in the liquid so long. I waited an hour but I could tell they were just not going to dry. I already had the oven on drying some kale so I stuck them in the oven for 15 minutes and that did the trick. I photographed them at that point. It was then I tasted them and was disappointed in the lack of vinegar flavor. I then wondered if maybe there was a step missing and that the vinegar and sugar mixture was supposed to boiled until thickened before the almonds got tossed in. In my mind, that would not only help the flavor to stick but would also explain the 10 minute dry time. I still had the mixture on my stove so I set out to tweak some more. I let the mixture boil until slightly thickened and put the almonds back in. I gave them a quick stir in the "caramel" and then dipped them back out on a clean baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Not sure if this was right either but they did dry in 10 minutes and had the dominant vinegar flavor I was looking for. They were more of an almond cluster candy at that point though. If I were to make this again I'd soak the almonds in vinegar overnight and then just oven dry them. I'd also only use half of the vi