I saw someone washing raisins before serving them in a bowl. I had never seen that before. Just wondering if raisins need to be washed before eating.
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1wouldn't that make them stick to each other (more than usual) ? – Max Jun 27 '20 at 21:36
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1Well, they weren't more sticky. A bit more plump and less wrinkly I suppose. – skotsson Jun 27 '20 at 21:43
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Raisins do not need to be washed. However, there are plenty of applications where a soak in water, wine, or other alcohol is called for. This plumps the raisins a bit.
moscafj
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Counter to what the accepted answer says, raisins should be washed to remove pesticides. They are LOADED with pesticides. EWG has a blog post on this, and here is a relevant excerpt:
Of more than 750 raisin samples analyzed, 99 percent tested positive for at least two pesticides. On average, each sample was contaminated with more than 13 pesticides, and one sample had 26 pesticides.
sorrell
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2And do you have information on whether a swish in water (I can't imagine scrubbing them) reduces the pesticides? – rumtscho Jul 08 '23 at 08:36
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That article has lots of loaded language, but no meaningful data. Of course food crops test positive for pesticides; that's how they're grown. The crucial question is how much, and what effect does it have on consumers. Every one of us eats "poisonous" stuff every day without ill effects. – Pete Becker Jul 08 '23 at 12:15
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@rumtscho I pour a bowl of water with a tsp of baking soda and let them sit for 10 min and then rinse. This study points to its effectiveness https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jafc.7b03118 – sorrell Jul 09 '23 at 11:59
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@sorrell the study was done on fresh apples. Especially: "In the presence of NaHCO3, thiabendazole and phosmet can degrade, which assists the physical removal force of washing. " There is no physical removal force involved in draining raisins. You can't generalize from that study. – rumtscho Jul 09 '23 at 12:03
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@rumtscho I said it points to effectiveness not proves. Even using just water to rinse raisins will help remove pesticides, same as other produce. – sorrell Jul 09 '23 at 12:51
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@sorrell -- that sounds like a lot of work to solve a non-problem. That link in the question doesn't show any **harm** occurring. It's just hand-waving non-quantified assertions. What amounts of pesticides are present? What amounts of pesticides cause problems? – Pete Becker Jul 09 '23 at 17:36