Can You Eat The Skin Of Muscadine Grapes?

Option upwardly this fruit of the vine while you lot still tin.

Muscadine Grapes

If you're from anywhere other than the southeastern region of the U.S., your first introduction to Muscadine grapes might have come up while reading To Impale a Mockingbird:

Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that nosotros could play on her lawn, swallow her scuppernongs if nosotros didn't jump on the arbor, and explore her vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, so careful were we to preserve the delicate residuum of our relationship…

"Scuppernongs" might have sent yous running for the dictionary, which would inform you that scuppernongs are a type of Muscadine grapes. The word "scuppernong" is usually used to refer to all of the statuary-colored varieties. (The proper noun comes from a specific cultivar—one of hundreds—of Muscadine grape, merely is now used to refer to all the calorie-free-colored Muscadines.)

The word "Muscadine," on the other hand, typically refers to the so-chosen "blackness" types, which are deep red or regal (2, below) when ripe and dark-green (1) when unripe.

Muscadine Grapes

Although they are popular in the South, Muscadine grapes have a few traits working against them in their bid for grape popularity. (They're tasty enough to stand the test of time, though: The oldest grapevine in the U.South. is a scuppernong vine that is hundreds of years old):

Muscadine grapes are native to the southeastern United states; they like warm and boiling climates, so they tin't grow in the same types of places other kinds of grapes can. This ways they tin be hard to get your hands on if you aren't in the Southeast—your best bet is a well-stocked grocery store. (The grapes you see here were sent to us from Alabama by Melina Hammer.)
Like Concord grapes, Muscadines have substantial seeds (3, beneath) and are "sideslip-skin," meaning their skin and squishy insides hands dissever from i another. Since Muscadines tend to have thicker skins, this a benefit when eating them out of mitt—although the skin is edible, some people adopt to squeeze each grape so the pulp goes in their mouth and they tin discard the skin (and spit out the seeds).
They can be challenging to harvest. Table grapes are harvested in bunches: non so with Muscadine grapes. The grapes ripen at dissimilar times, so they demand to be picked individually, checking first for color then feeling them to make sure they aren't too difficult—they won't keep to ripen once picked. Luckily they are much larger than table grapes, so this chore isn't as onerous every bit it would exist with smaller grapes.

Muscadine Grapes

Of course you aren't limited to eating Muscadines fresh—you can broil with them or plough them into jelly, jam, and sauce. Muscadine juice tin can exist used to make sorbet and cocktails, or try your hand at making Muscadine wine.

And the skins and seeds of Muscadines isn't always discarded. The grapes can be used, peels included, to brand pie. Muscadines are also often processed to extract their juice; this leaves behind a lot of waste in the class of peel, pulp, and seeds. Mississippi State University nutritionist Betty J. Ector has found that a powdered-Muscadine purée (made from the skins and pulp) is a good source of resveratrol and dietary cobweb—more cobweb than institute in oat or rice bran. In this example, cooking with scraps isn't but a manner to prevent food waste, it tin can be really good for you, too.

Tell us: How do you lot like to utilise Muscadine grapes?

Photos past James Ransom

I similar esoteric facts about vegetables. Writer of the IACP Accolade-nominated cookbook, Cooking with Scraps.