Preserve grape leaves in brine
Time
Preparation time: 25 min.
Cooking or baking time: 5 min.
Total preparation time: 30 min.
We have a small vine in the garden with tiny grapes. This year I picked beautiful vine leaves and preserved them in brine.
So I can always make stuffed grape leaves in the fall as an appetizer, if we longed for it. The insertion is really easy.
ingredients
- fresh grape leaves
- water
- plenty of salt
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- Juice of a 1/2 lemon
preparation
- For about 50 grape leaves I boil two liters of water with salt. There's a trick to see if there's enough salt in the lake.
- I put a small peeled potato in the salt water and add salt. Once the potato floats up, the lake is saturated with salt.
- Now add the juice of half a lemon and 1 tablespoon of sugar.
- I wash the vine leaves and snap off the stalk. Then I cook them for about 4 minutes and then I put them in a large-opening glass jar, pour over the hot brine and screw the lid shut. In the fridge, the leaves will keep until Christmas.
Before further processing, I water the leaves to flush out the salt. Incidentally, they change their color from grassy green to olive green during the process, which is normal. In many Turkish shops you can buy fresh grape leaves for picking.
For the abundance there are plenty of recipes - very popular is hack with rice. I love a simple vegetarian filling - couscous cooked with herbs and mixed with ajvarpaste.
