Gumi Subscription Banner
DSCN9825.JPG

After our Berkeley backyard ume foraging adventure, Yoko, Sylvan (of Peko Peko) and I met up six days later to start pickling our umeboshi (pickled plum). Hooray! Umeboshi is the rice accompaniment of choice in Japan--the image of the sour little scarlet ball, sitting on a bed of steaming rice for breakfast, is as ubiquitous as the peanut butter sandwich here in the States.

The thought of umeboshi makes my face pucker in an instant, and my mouth waters as I feel the sourness piercing my tongue. The pit is to be savored. Whenever I visited my aunt in Yokohama growing up, she would have this vat of really gorgeous, honey-soaked umeboshi, the size of a ¥500 coin. These are sweeter, soft, and velvety, and she would only let me eat one a day, they were so highly-prized. I looked forward to my daily umeboshi, and would sneakily pop another into my mouth while she was out hanging the laundry.

My dear friend Naoko Ogigami's film MEGANE also comes to mind when thinking about umeboshi. Naoko has an intense passion for eating, and will often even have a food stylist on set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFvUOOMrKs

Naoko devotes many scenes to umeboshi in MEGANE, as the characters all sit around the dining table of a dreamy island inn, and ritualistically speak of the pickled plum. In one of my favorite scenes, the innkeeper, who pickles his own plums every year, recites an old saying, "梅干しはその日のなんのがれ" ("umeboshi wa sonohi no nannogare" = umeboshi wards off danger for the day). He continues with, "Umeboshi and friends: The older, the better."

Which is all to say that umeboshi plays a mythical, all-powerful, culture-dominating role in Japan's history that goes far beyond just for eating. Yoko and I were really excited about making a 2011 batch with Sylvan.


A few days prior, we accompanied Sylvan to Tokyo Fish Market and bought out all the ume they had left for the season. Like I said before, the season for ume is fleeting, so you really need to snatch them up when you see them. We would be using everything we foraged and the two big boxes we bough to make umeboshi and umeshu (plum wine).

We inspected each ume:

DSCN9804.JPG

DSCN9799.JPG

Took out the little stub of what was left of the stem with a toothpick:

DSCN9803.JPG

DSCN9807.JPG

We carefully washed them, laid them on slats to properly dry, and divided them up between the good, the bad, and the ugly. The prettiest ones would be used for umeboshi, and all the others for the umeshu.

DSCN9812.JPG

DSCN9815.JPG

DSCN9809.JPG

UMEBOSHI (Pickled Plums)

INGREDIENTS

Turns out that pickling ume is incredibly easy. We consulted two Japanese cookbooks--one said that with however much ume you have in weight, 15% of it should be salt. Another said 20%. Sylvan wanted them on the sweeter side, so we went with 14%.

DSCN9808.JPG

We used bags of salt from Japan.

DSCN9819.JPG

Nothing special about this salt per se, but Sylvan wanted to use ingredients they would in Japan, to end with a similar product.


In total, we had about 2.25kg of ume for the umeboshi (roughly 5lbs). So we measured out about 2254g of salt.


DSCN9830.JPG

METHOD

1. Start layering and sprinkling salt over the ume.

DSCN9831.JPG

2. Keep doing this, occasionally stirring the salt and ume with your hands to make sure the salt is evenly distributed. Push down on the ume to compress.

DSCN9833.JPG

3. Then, push down with a plate or something with a sturdy flat surface. You will use this so you can lay something VERY heavy on top, to weigh it down and compress the ume.

DSCN9834.JPG

4. Take off the plate for a second and properly saran wrap the top of the container. Place plate on top of the wrap.

5. We bagged some bricks to use as weights for this.

DSCN9836.JPG

Traditionally, you'll use a ceramic container for pickling, like this for our other batch. We repeated the same exact steps above.

DSCN9821.JPG

DSCN9822.JPG

DSCN9824.JPG

Wrap.

DSCN9826.JPG

Weigh down.

DSCN9835.JPG

We'll need to add red shiso leaves soon. We're looking for a large quantity, so if anyone out there has a source for it, please let us know.

Now, we just wait. And wait. And wait. As the innkeeper said in MEGANE, umeboshi and friends, the older, the better.

Sylvan emailed me the other day: "The umeboshi are doing very well-- beautiful color (even without shiso) and completely submerged in their own juice. They smell divine, too."

I hope these umeboshi turn out well, and I'll be posting the progress from time to time here on Umamimart. Yamahomo had commented that we should have put the ume in a paper bag to let them ripen a bit. We did see that the ume in the cookbooks were also a bit more yellow, but we just went for it. Patience is a virtue, but cooking is also all about trial and error.

Om shanti namaste.

Next up, umeshu (plum wine)!
Tags:

14 comments

  • You can use any plum, they will turn out great. I use wild California plums, also plums from abandoned orchards. If you hike in western Marin county, you will see many, many, many trees of wild plums.

    KinokoZuki on

  • My ume tree finally produce few pounds of fruit, pick them all today, and a lot of insect damaged
    fruit, I sort them out, and follow instruction to make two batches, my tree took more than 12+ years to produce, planning to grow tree from seeds I collected and as seedling become pencil size, will graft them with scion from the original tree, hoping to produce fruit sooner. Any comments? Chicago IL

    Oriana on

  • gahhhh むかつく.

    Kayoko on

  • making umeboshi with unripe plum makes tough skin, which isn’t recommended. Don’t make me dance “I told you so” dance.  Look at the color of this link!
    http://www.geocities.jp/yamapon65/tisantisyou_umebosi.html

    Yamahomo on

  • Yamahomo is banned from Umamimart until further notice.

    Kayoko on

  • EVERY Japanese site for umeboshi recipe SPECIFICALLY tell you to use ripe (yellow to pinkish in color) plums, which I told you so last time.

    Yamahomo on

  • You drive me absolutely bonkers.

    Kayoko on

  • Did you sterilize containers with alcohol? They tend to get moldy very easily without the process.

    Yamahomo on

  • jkjkjkjkjkjkjkjkjk.

    Let’s just sit tight and see how they turn out, shall we? Unfortunately, we had already done the pickling by the time you had commented on the Foraging post.

    So it goes.

    Kayoko on

  • Omg Yama don’t make me CRY! I wonder every day if leaving New York was the best or worst decision of my life.

    Tears. Miss you.

    Kayoko on

  • Since I am from Wakayama, where the best umeboshi comes from, I should have been consulted. This is exactly what happens when you are 5000 miles away.

    Yamahomo on

  • Answer for where to find in San Francisco area. Easy to find the ume at Japan and Korean grocery stores. California grown. Do not know exact start and end dates. Certainly there early May and still there end of May. One store clerk said maybe until mid June. I made umeshu and the Japan grocery store is actually all set up for that. With information, bags of rock sugar and bottles of the high alcohol shochu all on display near the ume. Also while web research said that ume are not the same as apricot, they did say related and they certainly in unripe stage taste very similar. So, also made a few bottles of apricot from tree in backyard of friend. Will not know outcome for a year.

    Matthew on

  • I have been making umeboshi for years after I planted a Japanese Plum tree at my home in
    Campbell in the SF Bay Ares. I start the process when the plums begin to fall, in June
    and I harvest all of the fruit at the same time. The stems removed and the fruit washed in cold water. I use a large plastic container, rinsing serval times, but not using vodka to sterlize, and I believe this is my mold problem. Dry for three days, turning iach day is required before proceeding further. I find shiso is difficult to find here in the San Jose area &
    will have to start growing it in my gsrden.
    Would like to try making firm ume that is
    available in Japanease stores.

    Roger Hughes on

  • I love following your UME project! How did it turn out… I live in Napa and am looking for a good source of Ume fruit- can you help me find some? What month do they ripen? I thought I saw June, but your posts are from July- I would love to chat with you about the whole project! I was wondering about doing this with the California wild plums (if I cant get UME fruit)… what do you think?

    Ada on

Leave a comment

Please note: comments must be approved before they are published