Muscadines
Photo: MVL
Google “Muscadine” and it’ll bring up the following “People Also Ask” question:
Can humans eat muscadine grapes?
This, of course, is hilarious if you already know about these big, beefy, dark purple, seemingly prehistoric grapes. But if you don’t? Perfectly reasonable. While grape-like in appearance, they’re impossibly huge and foreboding.
But fear not. Vitis rotundifolia, or muscadine is, indeed, just a grape. A total unit of a grape, but a grape all the same. Muscadines grow natively from Florida up to the New Jersey Coast and west to eastern Texas and Oklahoma. If you find a bin of these beasts that are green, you’re still in the right neighborhood as they’re a variety of muscadine called “Scuppernongs”. Muscadines have been cultivated since the 16th century, so you’ve gotta ask yourself, “Why aren’t these guys more popular?” Here’s why the muscadine is an acquired taste.
Skin: Oh, it’s thick. You know the satisfying crunch you get with your typical lunch box grapes? Multiply that by a thousand. Both in thickness and satisfaction. That thick skin isn’t just packaging, it also adds plenty to the palate. It’s got a tarty bite to it, kind of like the skin of a plum, that perfectly offsets the sweetness inside.
Meat: It seems weird to call the inside of a grape “meat” but in this case it’s appropriate. Because there’s just so darn much of it. Juicy, firm, and super sweet. It’s like eating four traditional grapes all at once (it also keeps you from eating more than one muscadine at a time).
Seeds: HA! You KNEW there had to be a big downside. Yeah, it has seeds. But where those tiny grapes you’re used to have tiny seeds that get in your teeth, muscadines have BIG seeds that make it easy to compartmentalize in your mouth and spit the heck out. (We highly recommend spitting them into a metal receptacle to hear the satisfying gongs.)
Availability: At the end of summer is when you’ve got to look for these monsters hiding in your local markets. Farmer’s markets? Totally. Easy. If you have an Aldi, they’re hip to the muscadine action, too.
One thing’s for sure, once you bite into a muscadine and experience that explosion of tart and sweet, you’ll never go back to those tiny grapes ever again.
