Make Your Own Raisins

This is total pantry love. It makes me feel that I must bake something right now using raisins. I haven't bought raisins in over a year and now the first raisins to come into the house after my local food challenge are ones I made myself from free local grapes. It doesn't get cooler than that for us pantry types.

The grapes I picked last week-end have held up remarkably well in the garage while I try to squeeze my grape processing between my five jobs (six if you include the Etsy shop). I've got a gallon and a half of grape juice waiting to be canned, some of it to turn into jelly, and more grapes in the garage with a big question mark hovering in a cloud above them. Now that my first batch of raisins has come out of the dehydrator* I have concluded that raisins should always taste just like dried grapes.

Raisins usually taste like very sweet gobs of sticky fruit. I like them. Many people I know don't care for them. The grapes (pictured here) that I used for making raisins taste a lot like a concord grape- think Welch's purple juice- but are green, small, and seedless. I believe it's a variety called Interlaken.

The only successful fruit drying experience I've had in the past was when I dried sweet cherries that had sat around macerating in sugar for twelve hours, then rinsed, before drying. I don't like how the dehydrator often makes fruit hard and stiff. It's challenging to know when to pull things out; how to achieve the perfect ratio of dryness to moisture for best keeping quality. Apparently, soaking fruit in sugar improves its texture while drying so that it retains a pleasant quality of tackiness that has some give to it so you don't mistake your fruit for a little piece of shoe leather.

Sweet cherries do not, in my opinion, taste good when dried. But having made them and not liking them insured that they would stick around in the cupboard long enough to see if they would mold. A year later and they are just as "good" as when they first entered the pantry. Too bad they taste like bland stewed fruit.

I sugared my bowl of grapes and added a tablespoon of vegetable oil. I stirred them well with a sprinkle of water to dissolve the sugar. After they sat for a few hours I rinsed them then dumped them unceremoniously onto my dryer trays and shook them into a single layer.

Twenty four hours later at a 135 degree heat most of them were perfect. A few of the larger ones needed more time to dry. These grapes were not at their peak sweetness so they have an amazing balance of sweet with a little zingy tartness and what's better: they taste like grapes, not raisins.

Philip waltzed into the kitchen ate a few and glibly said "You can buy raisins, you know."

I have never seen him snacking on raisins and noticed that he kept taking a few more. And a few more.

"That's why, you smug ass! They taste damn good."

He agreed.

Furthermore, the grapes were free, we already had a dehydrator, and it didn't take much work to throw them in there.

Plus they're the only raisins I've ever actually thought were worth eating by themselves.

But now that I see how good they are I know what I must do with the rest of my seedless grapes.

Why make your own raisins? Because it's fun, it's easy, and they taste better. Do you need more reasons than that?