Harvest Time: how to eat Yuzu fruits

 

Last October, I posted my adventure with Yuzu tree in our family’s garden. I thinned green fruits, hoping ripen yellow citrus in better shape and without blemish. I more or less succeeded. The ripen fruits were better shaped, but after enduring several typhoons and storms some of them had scars on their yellow skin. OK, unless we grow the treen in a well-built glass house, it would be the best our family can achieve with the tree, I reasoned. We had more than 200 yellow fruits from our only 2 or so meters tree. It’s amazing observing the plant’s fecundity! Though, after harvesting I faced a huge task. What to do with these yellow balls? Yuzu fruits are very sour despite of their lovely, sweet smell. It’s just like lemon: not for direct consumption under normal circumstances ... I supported one Paralympian in Tokyo who needed to bite and eat up fresh lemons just before competition. That person said that’s the way to calm and concentrate the mind for the very important moment. Er, OK. The next hurdle for us was to procure enough number of fresh lemons in the Paralympic Village, bubbled due to COVID … Anyway!

I left the most damaged fruits on the tree,
thinking birds may take it.
Nah. Many remained on the branch, shriveled.

Standard usages of Japanese ripen yuzu fruits are

1. Squeeze juice, mix it with rice vinegar (of the same or slightly less amount of the juice) and store them in a fridge as yuzu vinegar. Oh, storing fresh juice sans rice vinegar could be an option if you plan to use it up within a week. In this case, due to the amount we could extract from our harvest, vinegar was added as a sort of preservative;

2. Peel bright yellow skin, and store them in a fridge for cooking usage;

3. Cooking jam, preserve, or marmalade from them.

Inevitably, our fridge rapidly lost the space for Yuzu. I deployed freezer space for solution ... I hope we can enjoy the harvest at least until the end of coming summer … The way to make jam or marmalade from the fruit is same as for oranges. That’s that, and we ended up with more than 10 jars of yuzu jam. I was busy distributing them among my friends this winter. And there still remained the fruits in a basket. Before they shrivel, I have to do something!

My 2022 Yuzu jam

The easiest to make and rapidly consumed product with ripen yuzu fruits has been “Yuzu-honey.” The recipe is uber simple. (1) slice the fruit and soak them in honey. (2) wait for at least 24 hour until the juice of the fruit mixed completely with honey. (3) pour hot water or soda to yuzu-honey mixture of the amount you fancy. (4) Enjoy! It’s very sweet drink for deep winter … It must be packed with Vitamin C. The drink could be a strong defense against flu, at least! I My advice for storing yuzu honey is “Fridge, Fridge, Fridge.” It’s easy for the concoction to be moldy at room temperature. Corollary: making yuzu honey is not enough to use up more than 200 fruits without pressure for fridge. I needed next move.

Yuzu-honey.
I did not add any H2O for making it.
They were very juicy fruits!

The recipe I’ve found was to make Yuzu-miso paste. There are at least 2 versions: one for short-term consumption, another for long-term (er, but I guess for less than 1 year) preservation. Short-term Yuzu-miso is a standard ingredient for winter cuisine in Kyoto. The way to make goes like this:

<Ingredients>

2-3 tbsp. of grated Yuzu peel

2 tsp. of squeezed Yuzu juice (no need to add rice vinegar)

150g of white miso paste

2 tbsp. of sugar

3 tbsp. of Mirin

White miso paste is made of soy beans, salt, and malted rice, just as red paste. But the amount of malted rice to ferment soy is far larger than that for regular red miso paste. (If you try making it by yourself, please check here.) The result is sweet taste overwhelming the average saltiness of miso. Mirin is rice wine which is also sweet. So, the Yuzu-miso of this recipe not only salty, but also sweet. The way to make it is simple. Mix white miso paste, sugar and mirin well in a pan. Then you put the pan on slow fire and mix the contents until it started to have a shiny texture. Mind you, it won’t take much the mixture changes their feel, maybe in less than 5 minutes. In addition, it is easy to be burned, due to natural sugar of the miso. Please keep on watching the pan carefully. When the sugar-mirin-miso concoction alters their feel into polished, remove the pan from heat. Add the grated peel and juice in the pan and mix well. Voila! You can use it to graze your meat, fish, or simply on your morning toast.

Half-used up white yuzu-miso.
Could you get “shiny” feel from the photo?

The way to make long-term version is basically the same. The difference is, we use regular red miso paste. It goes like this:

<Ingredients>

100g of yuzu, peels grated, and juice squeezed. We use 1/3 amount of yuzu juice procured from 100g (no need to add rice vinegar)

400g of red miso paste

400g of sugar, preferably brown

2 tbsp. of Mirin

Red miso paste is standard miso paste you could find in supermarket. The way to make longer-storage Yuzu-miso is (1) Mix well miso paste and sugar in a pan. (2) put the pan over very weak fire and keep on mixing slowly for 5-6 minutes, i.e. longer than the short-term version. (3) add Mirin and continue blending gently the mixture over slow heat for 10 or so minutes more. (4) remove the pan from heat just before the miso becomes sticky. The concoction should be still slightly watery. (5) add grated peels and yuzu juice to mix well. Have you noticed for both white and red yuzu-miso, grated yuzu peel and juice are added after the pan is removed from heat? It is to preserve the fragrance and taste of citrus in the miso. People say it’s OK to store red yuzu-miso at room temperature. But I guess it would be safer to store them in a fridge … er, it means my problem with tons of yuzu fruits continues. I did further research and found a solution. Next week, I report you my answer for the situation. Phew. 😂

My red yuzu-miso, 2022.

If you find a problem in the greenery of north-half of Yokohama, please make a contact with

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North
北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau
横浜市環境創造局
Phone: 045-311-2016 

FAX: 045-316-8420