Having too much wild-life in the backyard is a blessing and at the same time a scourge if trying to grow fruits/vegetables. We have three large grape vines that produce lots of leaves and sour grapes. Although, I have no complaints about the dolmeh from the leaves, we never get to eat any of the grapes since the animals get there first. In previous years, I harvested a little sour grapes here and there to add to khoreshes. But this year, I decided to harvest ALL the sour grapes and started to look up how to best (or easy) preserve sour grapes. So, here are some ways I found:
Verjuice: What to Do With Sour Grapes – “crush the grapes in a blender, pass the pulp through a sieve, and either use it immediately or freeze it.”
GOOD: produces verijuice
BAD: too much work and no sour grapes are left
Freezing fruits/vegetables right off the vine: “That said, they are typically best used for jam or smoothies because freezing breaks them down so they taste fine but look ugly.”
GOOD: produces ready to use frozen sour grapes / appears to be the easiest way to preserve sour grape till next season
BAD: some breakage of sour grapes
Preserve in verijuice (*) or citrus juice and refrigerate
GOOD: (*) the first recommended method by family
BAD: too much work and too much of sour grapes are used for verijuice
Preserve in brine (follow wiki preservation of pickles?)
GOOD: produces good looking sour grapes
BAD: some work, but may be worthed
After looking over several sites, it seems that some chefs recommend using either “fresh or frozen sour grapes or drained Persian sour grapes in brine”. So before I start freezing the sour grapes that I have harvested, I wanted to see if the IC users had any experiences or better methods?
OK, just like the internet where most sour grape stuff was political, you can pour your heart out here too, but you can also try to “preserve” that sour grape comment for another time!
