So how did the fruit leather that was dehydrating yesterday taste?

Rodney

Lots of folks make wine with them as well. But the leather idea appeals to me more. I'm not much of a wine drinker.

I think you can pop the centers out and then cook the skins by themselves to make them softer. Then you might be able to blend the skins with the centers and make something.

Might also look up muscadine hull pie. Then you would have a use for the skins.

Sorry to be so long in replying. Been out of town.
The dehydrated muscadines are absolutely delicious. The flavor is bright and pure, not like any other dried fruit I have ever had.The trick is to get the pulp out of the fruit. Chopping the fruit before running it through the strainer is definitely the trick.

Next year, I will wash the fruit and take off stems. Then chop it in the Food processor, and run it through a wire sieve. When the pulp in the sieve is about the consistency of applesauce, it's ready to go into the dehydrator. I had the best results in setting my dehydrator on about 90 degrees, which is quite a bit cooler than typical fruit temps. And then, of course, there is all that luscious juice left. I put it in jars and froze it. The flavor is much better if it's not exposed to heat.

Hi, I'm a home gardener with five production size muscadine vines. My vines are youngish so I'm still experimenting with things. There are a number of desert recipes for them online. I make muscadine jam with them and then use the jam in savory recipes. I have also downloaded some Asian plum souse recipes and made "muscadine sauce" with them. When processing muscadines there are a few tricks that you might find useful for ext time. If it's a traditional slip skin variety, start by separating the skins from the pulp. Just squeeze the pulp into a bowl and put the skin into a separate container. The best tasting juice is in the skins. That's also where the vitimine and nutrients are. The skin of some varieties are astringent and add a lot of tartness, so some sugar may need to be added. When I make jams I grind up the skins in a blinder and add it to the jam. It makes the jam. There are several muscadine pie recipes out there that mainly use the skins. When extracting juice out of the pulp or skin, think "pasteurizing" you heat them quickly and lightly and then extract the juice. Some will accomplish this using steam rather than through boiling. A little heat does a lot.

Some of the newer muscadine varieties are bread to have firm flesh and brittle crunchy skin. The varieties with this characteristic that I know about are Supreme, Lane, Late Fry, Big Red, Darlene, Black Beauty, and Majesty. (Majesty is a new variety which is not available to the public yet, but this one is one is supposed to be an inch in a half in diameter). These types you can pick while slightly green, cut in half and scoop the seeds out and process like plums. Something I plan to try is to simply can them and make whole sweet pickles with them. However, these varieties when picked slightly green (color turned but not soft), are quite crunchy and sweet tart. so I think they will make a very nice sweet relish.

But truth be told, the big female varieties such as Supreme and Black Beauty are so good I end up standing next to the vines and eating most of the berries right there. Supreme is so sweet that the berries are good to eat long before it fully ripens. So even though it might produce 50 lbs of fruit, I doubt that fruit will go to waste. But the females are just that, female. You need a self fertile variety to go with it for pollination. Supreme which is the largest and the sweetest of the muscadines has some special care needs that the others don't have. The best source of informatiI on on care is the Ison Nursery web-page and You Tube channels. They grow more muscadines than anyone else in the world and give lots of helpful hints.

The commercial muscadines all bloom at the same time. You can extend your harvest by a lot by planting a mixture of early, mid season and late season varieties. Also Late Fry and a few others are long season varieties. It starts ripening berries late (September) and will ripen berries until the end of October. Last year, mine has just a smattering of berries to ripen just before Thanksgiving. God bless.

All muscadine grape skins are not equal. Some are easier to work with and have the same beneficial qualities. I grow a number of varieties for my u-pick operation in North Central Florida. Probably my favorite variety to work with is Southern Home, a University of Florida cross breed variety with some attributes of a vinifera type of grapes. We slip the skin off of the grape thereby separating the skin from most of the pulp and seeds. The skins can be chopped or run through a food processor. We steam the pulp and seeds and then separate the pulp from the seeds. The pulp can be added to the skins with a little juice for consistency then rolled out and dehydrated. The light purple juice can be used for jellies or consumed as is. If you are going to fiddle around with muscadine grapes a Victorio steam juicer is a wonderful tool. Enjoy