Japanese · sauce/condiment

Umeboshi (Salt-Cured Sour Plums with Red Shiso)

Umeboshi (Salt-Cured Sour Plums with Red Shiso) reads sourness 5.5, salinity 4.9 and herbaceous 2.6 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a Japanese sauce/condiment, about 540 hr 50 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

The measured notes (of 18)

Sourness 5.5 · Salinity 4.9 · Herbaceous 2.6 · Fruity 2.4 · Bitterness 1.7 · Warm Spice 1.3 · Citrus 0.6 · Floral 0.6 · Funk & Ferment 0.6

What's in it (8)

Time & effort: about 540 hr 50 min (5 min active) · effort: easy

Dietary: Vegan — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (7 steps)

  1. Cover the ume with cold water and leave them overnight to draw out bitterness, then drain, pick off every stem end with a bamboo skewer and dry each fruit with a cloth. A single wet stem cavity is where mould starts. Discard any fruit with a break in the skin.
  2. Wipe the inside of a 4 litre crock or food-grade tub with shochu, and roll each plum briefly in a bowl of shochu as you pack it. Layer the fruit with the 360 g of salt, heaviest at the top. Eighteen per cent is the traditional country ratio and it does not fail; the 8 per cent supermarket umeboshi are a modern refrigerated product and will mould in an unrefrigerated crock.
  3. Lay a wooden or plastic drop lid on the fruit and weight it with 2 kg, twice the usual for pickles. Cover with cloth and keep in a cool dark place. Within 3 to 4 days the plums must be swimming in their own risen brine, the umezu; if they are not, add more weight at once. Leave 3 to 4 weeks, checking weekly for surface mould and wiping it off with a shochu-dampened cloth.
  4. In mid-July, wash the shiso, dry it and rub it hard with the 40 g of salt in a bowl. It will produce a startling amount of dark purple-brown liquid; throw that first pressing away, then rub again with what liquid remains and throw that away too. This is where the harshness leaves the leaf. Loosen the compressed shiso with the 60 ml of umezu, at which point the whole mass turns a violent magenta, and bury it in the crock.
  5. At the height of summer, during the doyo period in late July or early August, choose three consecutive fine days. Lay the plums on bamboo trays in full sun each morning, turn them at midday, and bring them in at dusk on the first two nights to return to the crock brine overnight. On the third day dry the shiso alongside them. The fruit finishes wrinkled, soft, mahogany-red and intensely salty-sour.
  6. Pack the umeboshi into sterilised jars with the dried shiso, with or without a little umezu, and keep them in a cool cupboard. They improve for years. One plum in the middle of a bowl of white rice is the hinomaru bento; one dissolved into hot water is what a Japanese household gives someone with a cold.
  7. Substitutions: vodka at 35 per cent can stand in for the shochu.

Dishes with a similar flavor shape

Keep reading: what sourness, salinity, herbaceous mean in the flavor lexicon · the world's cuisines, by flavor.

See how this dish fits your palate — take the short taste test →

Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.