Muscadine Preserve Project

Every year, we get hundreds of pounds muscadines in from local farmers in the area, and this year we were lucky to find muscadine trees growing down by the Valley and other places on property. This immediately got me excited! Muscadines are a big food memory for me. I grew up picking them with my grandparents, and I spent days in the kitchen as a kid making jams and preserves with my babysitter. To this day, I’m still picking muscadines, at my parents’ house, and I’m still making preserves using the same antique chinoise (fine mesh strainer). The smell fills the kitchen and brings me back to being a kid, preserving, tasing and canning to enjoy our spoils later in the year.

So, when I received a text from our farmer that he had muscadines ready, I jumped to get my hands on as many as I could. At the time, I didn’t know how I would use them, but I knew I wanted them. I had never preserved them with the skin on, and I decided I wanted to try it. You either love the skin on the muscadines, or you spit it right out! Personally, it’s my favorite part! I set out to use every part of the grape, and what started out as an experiment turned into a new ingredient for breakfast at the Mountain – going into everything from pancakes and muscadine bars to danishes!

We started by putting the preserve on our pancake of the day – we love a dish that highlights a local ingredient, local farmers and our own property. But I knew we needed more then just muscadine preserves on the cake; it needed a crunch element. Cue a tasty candied pecan!

Beyond our beautiful muscadines, we wanted to make sure we preserved as many Summer ingredients as we could, to use in the Winter when we don’t have as many bright and fun ingredients to cook with. During the Winter, the kitchens are very limited on the seasonal produce coming in, so preserving these amazing ingredients from local farms is the best way to keep a flavorful and exciting menu year-round. I asked myself, “What do we have an abundance of, and what will get us excited in the Winter that we can preserve now?” We had beautiful shishitos, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, muscadines, Italian frying peppers and peaches. The team got started preserving, and we are looking forward to a Winter full of fun preserves!

Get the recipe for Three Sisters Muscadine Preserve and Brown Sugar Sour Cream Cakes!

– Alyssa Hoo, Three Sisters AM Sous Chef