Thursday, 14 August 2014

Preserving vine leaves

We have a crappy vine that never has any grapes (except about 3 tiny ones last year that never ripened). To try to make it useful in some way (no slackers on the farm - and that includes the plants!) I have preserved some of the leaves to make stuffed vine leaves. I have never tried making them before but I need to now to use up those vine leaves!

For the preserving liquid (you need somewhat less than the total volume of your jars)
1l water
3 tsp citric acid or vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
2 tsp salt
Boil the water and add the acid and salt and boil for another 30 seconds

Vine leaves
Preserving jars - they need to be reasonably tall, although it is fine if they are a bit shorter than the leaves.

While the water is boiling prepare the vine leaves by washing them.
Then make a pile of 5 leaves and roll it up. Before rolling fold down the pointed ends so the roll will fit in your jar. You can tie with string if you want, but no need.
Make all the leaves in to rolls and stuff the rolls upright in to the jar. You want them fairly tightly packed so the leaves don't float up in the jar.
Once all the jars are packed pour the hot liquid over the leaves.
Put the lids on and process for 10 mins in a pan of hot water.
As the jars cool the tops of the lids should pop down. If not then reprocess.
This jar is about 500 ml, there are about 30 leaves in there. It could have been tighter packed.

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