With These Tips, You’ll Always Buy the Tastiest Grapes
With many types of fruit, you can tell for yourself when they’re at their best when you buy them. By now, we also know how to pick the tastiest mandarins; with a banana, you can immediately see whether it’s destined for the fruit bowl or your banana bread, and you either leave an apple with bruised spots at the store or make applesauce with it. But what about grapes?
Because you obviously know that a wrinkled or moldy grape isn’t going to taste great on your cheeseboard, or simply as a refreshing snack. And you can recognize really fresh grapes like this:
White bloom
By the whitish haze that you can see particularly clearly on red or blue grapes. I even called my former greengrocer Labes in Amsterdam’s Jordaan neighborhood especially to ask whether there was a technical term for it that I didn’t know. There isn’t. ‘You mean that dewy layer? It’s simply called that dewy layer,’ he told me in a thick Amsterdam accent.
Well protected
It does indeed look a little like dew, like frost—in any case, like coolness and freshness on an early morning. As if those sweet little fruits are blushing a bit. On white grapes, it’s less easy to spot, but if you look closely, you’ll probably see it there too. And those are the tastiest grapes. That layer isn’t something chemical that has been sprayed on; it’s an almost powdery-looking layer that grapes produce themselves, protecting them from drying out and rotting like a little jacket. Those are the ones you want.
Firmly attached to the stem
It’s also advisable to pay attention to where the stem meets the grapes and to their color. The grapes should be firmly attached, and the stems should be green and flexible rather than woody and dry. Red grapes should be as fresh red as possible, blue grapes a deep, almost blackish purple, and white grapes yellowish green. That’s when they’re at their best.
Now that you know what to look for, you’ll always bring home the tastiest grapes. Perfect for eating as they are, but also absolutely delicious served as boozy frozen grapes!
Also read:
- How to keep your groceries fresh 10 times longer
- Fruit allergy? Try these tips
- What’s the difference between raisins and currants?
Source: Sun World Australia
