When you have a large crop of grapes from the garden or farmstand, you don't have time to casually include them in complicated recipes or to frantically figure out how to use them up before they go bad without getting sick of them. You want to make the most of your harvest and to actually enjoy it.
Here at Plant to Plate, we like to keep things simple! Here are some of my favorite ways to use or preserve grapes:
- Make a simple chicken salad with grapes, celery, and chicken. Add a creamy dressing of your choice.
- Add them to other chicken salads.
- Use them as Walls of an Interesting Salad. (Wondering why I capitalized those letters? Read more about Interesting Salads here!)
- Make a Simple Salad. A few ideas for Simple Salad combinations with grapes are as follows:
- Blueberries and dragonfruit
- Kiwi and dragonfruit
- Kiwi and blueberries
- Kiwi and melons
- Chicken and celery
- Apples and lettuce
- Add them to pasta salad.
- Mix them with cottage cheese and nuts like pecans, walnuts, or almonds.
- Top toast, crostini, bagels, or crackers with halved grapes, almonds, and cream cheese.
- Make jam or jelly with them, alone or with the addition of mints or catmint.
- Make infused oil. Grape-infused oil can be used as a salad dressing or drizzle. It can also be processed further into preparations such as lotions.
- Make a tincture. Grape fruits, seeds, flowers, and leaves can all be used in herbal preparations such as tinctures. An herb:solvent weight ratio of 1:3 at 50% alcohol is suggested for a grape tincture.
- Dry or dehydrate the fruits to make your own raisins. Learn more about drying and dehydrating here.
- Dry the leaves, flowers, and seeds to save them for later. See our How to Dry Your Herbs articles here for more information.
- Freeze them. In addition to being a great preservation method (discussed here), frozen grapes make excellent snacks, as they thaw quickly in your mouth. I like to use them as an alternate way to cool down in the summer instead of ice cream.
Further Reading
Growing grapes? Check out these quick facts like their best growing conditions, companion plants, and expected yields.
Grapes are also featured in these articles: