Egyptian Golden Raisins - Seedless

These are golden raisins: seedless grapes grown in Egypt and dried until they are soft, chewy and gold to amber in colour. Our supplier sells them as zbib masri, Egyptian raisins. We buy them in bulk and pack them ourselves into resealable pouches of 250 g, 500 g and 1 kg. Golden raisins are the light kind: plumper, softer and fruitier than dark raisins, with no seeds to bite on.

The taste is sweet and fruity, with a light tang under the sweetness, and the texture is soft and chewy. Because they are soft and seedless, they go straight from the pouch into a cake batter, a pot of rice or a bowl of khoshaf.

In Egypt raisins belong to Ramadan and to the feast table. In the weeks before Ramadan they are sold with nuts, dried apricots and dates as yamish and soaked into khoshaf for the evening meal: dried fruit left overnight in water with a little sugar and served cold. Om Ali, the baked pudding of pastry, milk and nuts, is studded with them, and at weddings and feasts they are fried with nuts and scattered over rice and fattah.

For khoshaf, soak a handful overnight with dried apricots, prunes or figs in water with a little sugar, add chopped nuts and serve it cold. For Om Ali, scatter them with the nuts between the pieces of pastry before the hot sweetened milk goes over, then bake. For festive rice, fry them for a minute in a little butter with almonds until they puff up, and spoon them over the rice or the fattah just before serving. Stir them into cake and biscuit batters, porridge or yoghurt. Eat them by the handful with tea or coffee. If they have dried out a little, soak them in warm water for ten minutes and pat them dry before baking.

If you are sensitive to sulphites, do not eat these raisins: golden raisins are often treated with sulphites to keep their light colour, and our supplier does not state whether these were. We cannot confirm that they were processed or packed away from nuts, peanuts or sesame, so if you have a food allergy, ask us before you order. Whole raisins are a choking risk for small children: chop them or soak them soft for young eaters. Grapes and raisins are poisonous to dogs, so keep the pouch out of their reach.

Two things this page does not claim. Because our supplier does not state it, we do not call these raisins free of sulphites or of the thin coat of vegetable oil that raisins often carry. Raisins are also widely sold with long lists of claimed effects, and this listing repeats none of them. They are sold as food, and nothing here is a health claim or medical advice.

Raisins keep their soft, fruity taste for a limited time: in heat and dry air they slowly harden, and they take up damp and kitchen smells when the pouch is left open. Keep the pouch pressed shut, cool and dry, away from spices and other foods with a smell of their own, and in a hot kitchen keep it in the fridge. Count on about six months of best taste from delivery while the pouch stays sealed, and about two months once it is open. White specks on the skin are the raisins' own sugar coming to the surface, not mould, and they melt away in warm water. If they ever smell sour or of wine, or show fuzzy mould, they have gone off and are best thrown away.