Umeboshi-style stone fruits
Umeboshi is made from salted unripe Japanese plums and red shiso. It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to find any fresh unripe Japanese plums anytime soon, but I wanted to try the same process with various stone fruits to see if I could produce something that fulfilled the same role of sour and salty.
Each attempt would follow a basic method:
- Wash and remove the stems from fruits, leaving stones in.
- Add fruit with salt to a jar, weighed down, for 4-6 weeks.
- Add massaged shiso leaves to jar.
- After a month, dry the fruit and leaves for 2-3 days.
As part of this experiment I also wanted to try different use cases for the leftover products from umeboshi: the red shiso leaves and the umezu (leftover brine).
Attempt 1: Nectarines
My first attempt was with nectarines, which I started with for no other reason than they looked nice. I was a little unsure on salt percentage, various resources seem to range anywhere between 10% and 20% of the fruit weight. With more traditional recipes being at the 20% mark. I started there, and added 1% citric acid to help with the tang that would be missing from unripe ume.
The nectarines ended up being in the salt brine for much longer than expected as I had persistent failures trying to germinate red shiso. I must have planted 30 seeds across a few weeks and only a single plant grew. And it ended up green.
Eventually, I found an online shop that sold the red shiso leaves and just ordered them. By this point the nectarines had been sat in the brine for around 5 months, but it didn’t seem to negatively affect the texture much, they still seemed pretty good.
I then added the shiso leaves, left it for another month, and dried them next to an open window for three days, occasionally turning them to make sure they weren’t sitting in any wet spots.
The end result tasted good, but they were too salty and didn’t have enough of the sourness you get from ‘real’ umeboshi. The aroma was really sweet, like an intense plum.
I used the umezu for salad dressings, and the shiso leaves were good chopped up and used in lots of different recipes, even simply with stir-fried vegetables. Next time, I think I’ll try drying the leaves further and use them to make yukari.
Attempt 2: Apricots
For the next attempt, I’m trying with apricots, which in theory are more similar to Japanese plums. Here I’m using 15% salt to stop the salt overwhelming the flavour of the fruit.
Next update: once the apricots have finished the first stage.
Related
Changelog
This page will change over time as I try things and figure out what works.