Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Making Pickled Grapes

I know, why would you want to pickle grapes after all? And what the heck do they taste like?  But trust me these are worth it. They make a wonderful condiment for chicken or turkey, and are a very special gift for that food gourmet in your life. 

I got the recipe from that pickling Bible 

The Joy Of Pickling 



which I think any serious or even pottering home cook should own.  She has such an abundance of recipes from fermented pickles, Asian pickles and fruit pickles that you can really find a recipe for anything you have too much of at the moment!  And as with most cookbooks that I actually deem worthy of purchasing (I am so pathetically cheap) it is a highly entertaining book with tons of history of the different types of pickles and how they came to be in different cultures.  

Well on to how I first tried pickling grapes.  I actually received a box of beautiful green interlaken grapes from a friend and had way to much to use before they went off, but certainly not enough to make jelly.  Interlaken are small green seedless grapes that are similar I suppose to champagne grapes in looks but not flavor of course.  Well now I was in a conundrum!  I hate to waste any food but had no way to use them up and I remember reading in the above book about pickled grapes.  What the heck I thought!  If we don't like them we can throw them to the chickens!  Rather than cutting the grapes in half I pickled them whole as they were so tiny and the results were just delicious.  They aren't vinegary or salty at all but more like whole cranberry sauce only grape flavored.  My very picky family just loved it and we ate them with roasted chicken and it was at the table for Thanksgiving.  This also is a wonderfully easy recipe which also earns brownie points for me.  So this year with grapes on a great sale I bought a bunch just for making into pickles.  I used her dark grape recipe and these are called midnight beauties and are seedless eating grapes.  But I will say that I liked the results from the smaller whole grapes much better.  You can often find interlaken grapes at farmers markets, or use some other seedless small grape.

WASHING AND STEMMING THE GRAPES



THE HALVED GRAPES AND PICKLING SOLUTION HEATING UP


THE FINISHED PRODUCT WHICH WILL BE READY IN TWO WEEKS 


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3 comments:

  1. I've never heard of pickled grapes so thanks for teaching me something new today.
    Visiting via Rural Thursday Blog Hop.

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  2. Are there certain types of grapes that work better or does it matter? I have red flame grapes growing here. Do you think would they work to make this?

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