Secret Cuisine: Bamboo Charcoal Salt

 

Although charcoal made from bamboo has lower calorie than wood charcoal (and so it’s inferior as energy), it has several usages. Bamboos dead or alive have lots of holes in their body. After we bake them into charcoal, it keeps its porous property with numerous micro-holes. When a material is porous, its surface area is far larger than its appearance. For 1g of wood charcoal, the average superficial area is 200-400 m2. For 1g of bamboo charcoal, it’s 700 m2. Smelly molecules wafting in the air would be plugged in the nano pits from which is difficult to escape. The more porous, the more space to capture molecules. Purifying power of bamboo charcoal > Power of wood charcoal. Got it? People are studying to utilize such characteristics to make sustainable activated carbon for industrial use. Or, it can be used for cooking. There are several charcoal products that can be used for cooking rice. How-to is simple. Wash charcoal with tap of water sans soap, dry them well, throw it in a rice cooker above rice and water, and cook it as usual. Chemically treated tap of water will be purified by bamboo charcoal, and the taste of cooked rice is softer and N-I-C-E. We can do the same with the highest-grade wood charcoal, but the cost performance we get from cheaper bamboo charcoal can beat the luxurious Binchotan 備長炭. Not bad, huh?

Charcoal Baking Hut, Spring 2022,
Niiharu CitizenForest 新治市民の森

Niiharu Lovers bake bamboo charcoal since its inauguration some 22 years ago (; my posts on March 3 and 10, 2017). We sell them as a fund-raiser to support our forest maintenance activity. Having said that, we cannot peddle our product good for rice cooker. Reason? In Japan in order to sell any food the supplier must hold business license based on Food Sanitation Act. Yap, we do not eat charcoal itself when we use bamboo charcoal for rice cooker. But the minerals of charcoal will inevitably dissolve in water and absorbed by cooked material. On the other hand, Niiharu Lovers do not have money, or more precisely, enough sales to cover license application fee to sell our bamboo charcoal for cooking. i.e. We cannot market Niiharu’s bamboo charcoal for food. But it does not stop us to use personally our product for cuisine. Japan is a free country! Using our charcoal for rice cooking privately is a start. Then one day, I found there is another gastronomy fun to bake bamboo charcoal. That’s about salt. It’s Bamboo Charcoal Salt.

Preparing for the charcoal baking kiln

I’m sure porous property of bamboo trunk should do wonder when we make bamboo charcoal salt. The way to baking bamboo charcoal salt is easy, as long as you have an access for bamboo charcoal kiln. It goes like this.

Ingredients: Nice sized bamboo trunk, salt. And just in case for the salt bursting out from the bamboo, I used aluminum foil, small pebbles from Yadoriki, and hemp string for a cap.

First, punch inside of bamboo trunk to pierce node(s) of bamboo, except the lowest knot that will be the bottom of a “bamboo vessel.” I made a hole and washed the whole bamboo with running tap of water. You see, it will contain food …

Next, stuff the bamboo with salt. I used crude salt that is used to pickle vegetables in Japan.

I precautionarily made room at the top of bamboo pipe to stuff the pebbles in case the contents boiling over. In retrospect, that was not a problem in the end. But in order to protect the product from charcoal dust, the cap was useful.

Here, the cap, typical tuff of Tanzawa Mountains including lapillistone, on aluminum foil.

We capped the above prepared bamboo vessel with another bamboo piece.

It then stuffed in the kiln with the other bamboos for baking.

We simply fired the kiln as usual (; my post on March 3, 2017). When we opened the lid of the kiln, the salt staffed bamboo trunk looked like this. Here we go! How did it turn out …?

The bamboo vessel simply lost the shape of pipe after baked in 800-900+Co for 24 hours. But the mass of salt was kept in a sort of cup of bamboo pipe like this. Could you see on our left there is a cap part? I mean, baked pebbles and aluminum foil. It was a sort of impressive scenery for me. Tanzawa’s tuff was made from volcanic activity. Especially the greenish lapillistone was cooled lava. It did not kept its color after charcoal baking …

The lower part of the vessel turned into baked salt.

I threw away the pebble and aluminum part of the contents and ground the rest. Here! Bamboo Charcoal Salt!

According to Google search (for example, here, here and here), the recipe for bamboo charcoal salt was first created by Buddhist monks in Korean Peninsula some 1300 years ago. They bake salt in a bamboo trunk capped by loess, with fire from pine logs. The whole process takes 3 months, and the baking is done 9 times. I wonder how they keep the bamboo vessel during the process. Bamboos will crumble just after one trial ... Anyway, their aim was / is to create medicine. When such precious drug came to Japan, the recipe was modified. No loess, and logs are chosen from our backyard forests, not limited to pines. In the 21st century, several makers in Noto Peninsula 能登半島 provide this special salt about 1000 yen for 100g salt (for example, here). It is served in the exclusive restaurants in Japan for Tempura and Sashimi. I tried my product and found certainly the edge of regular salt has gone. The heat reached to the stuffed salt via miniscule holes transferred the essence of bamboo to the salt. It smells like hot spring egg. So, for sure we have to choose for which dish we can use this salt. But, for example, fried veggies go superb with this salt! Niiharu Lovers secretly shared the product after baking the last bamboo charcoal for this season. Our portion is like 3 tablespoons per person … we are treasuring it and waiting for the next charcoal baking season. Ahem! We are law abiding citizens. This salt is for us only, Not For Sale 😉.

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

Good things come to those who wait: Yubeshi part 2

 

So, from the ingredients for Yubeshi, you may think “Hmmmmm … it’s vegetable protein and fat, isn’t it?” Right. The main ingredients of miso paste is soy. Nuts are for unsaturated fatty acid. For yuzu peel, here is 2015 data from Ministry of Education of Japan:

For 100g of yuzu peel, the main nutrients are

59 kcal
Protein 1.2g
Fat 0.5g
Carbohydrate 14.2g
Vitamin E 3.4mg
Vitamin C 160mg


As reference, 100g of yuzu juice contains

21 kcal
Protein 0.5g
Fat 0.1g
Carbohydrate 7.0g
Vitamin E 0.2mg
Vitamin C 40mg

It’s obvious yuzu peel is more nutritious than its juice. I guess that’s why ancient warriors carried them as ration. Now we’ve completed mise en place. Let’s start cooking.

First, we mix well Miso paste, Sugar, and Flour of your choice. You can skip flour if you prefer. The taste of Yubeshi will be stronger, i.e., saltier.

Next, add nuts and sesame. Mix well.

Finally, add sake and mirin. Fold them thoroughly to make a sticky dough. Or, you could skip adding such liquid in the dough. Again, the taste of Yubeshi will be stronger and saltier without these ingredients.

Put the miso mixture in a cup of yuzu peel. I think this is the most important part of cooking Yubeshi. If you economize the mixture, when you cook the peel, it could collapse and Yubeshi won’t be a shape of power ball. When you add too much of miso and nuts paste, the dough will expand during the cooking and overflow from the cup at best, or tear the cup and no ball will come out. The key is just nice amount of miso mixture in a cup. It would be like 70% of a cup, which could be …

like these. For this amount of dough, when you put the lid on a cup, it sunks in the cup. Don’t worry this dropped-in. It will turn out a nice Yubeshi ball.

Steam Yubeshi balls for 60 minutes, or …

until the fat of the peel and sugar covers the ball thoroughly and turns the balls shiny like these. Could you see the peel cups also have color of miso paste? That’s pretty much OK.

The miso oozed out and turned the color of the peel. No problem.

Next, wrap each cooked yuzu balls with a parchment paper and fasten it with a rubber band. It’s like making heads of dolls. Frankly, it’s fun! Now we reach to the last process for preparing Yubeshi balls. Let’s hung them somewhere to dry. I used old laundry nets for economizing the space (;hey, we’re in Japan!). Add one ball in a net, fasten the net at the top of the ball with a twine, then add another ball. Continue this until all the space of a net is full. I then hung them from a hanger. Very luckily when I steamed Yubeshi balls, it was a damned fine January weekend so that I started my drying outside. But letting balls to be wet by rain is HUGE no-no. The place to dry Yubeshi balls are somewhere with nice air circulation, and dry. If you care, you can check the form of the ball while the cup is still wet. You massage them to make them rounder, just like making a snowball.

It depends on the dryness of the climate of your place. In normally very dry Yokohama’s January, Yubeshi balls will be hardened within 7 days or so. I’m not sure when it is OK for the cooked Yubeshi balls are still soft after 7 days … I guess in such a case there is a danger the cooked yuze cups are getting moldy and started to rotten, i.e. the failure of the cooking. That’s the reason people say cooking Yubeshi balls must be completed by the end of January in Kanto region, Yokohama included ... Metropolis Tokyo in December to January has very dry but not so harsh winter. Having said that, as long as the air is dry enough it won’t be a problem, I surmise. Traditionally, this Yubeshi balls are made not only in Nara Prefecture but also in Ishikawa Prefecture where they have huge amount of snow fall in winter. Heavy snow does not mean wet weather, you see?

The next step of this recipe is, W-A-I-T. Once the Yubeshi balls are hardened in the net, let them keep drying for at least one more month in a place of good air circulation. It means when you’ve completed cooking yuzu cups at the end of January, Yubeshi balls will become power balls in the first or second week of March. After the long waiting, the wrapped Yubeshi cups shrink in the paper to become like these.

Inside the paper wrap is completely dried Yubeshi balls. Once the Yubeshi reaches to this stage, it can be stored in room temperature.

To eat Yubeshi, the standard is to slice them. A ball Yubeshi is very hard, but cutting them is not hard. Come to think of it the inside of the cup was the mixture of miso paste that was once creamy. The taste of Yubeshi is salty (because of miso) and sweet (thanks to sugar). It has flavor of yuzu fruits, nuts, and sesame. As they have been folded by miso which is fermented by yeast, these peels and nuts are also matured in a cup and create complex harmony of savor. I tell you they are D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!!!! No wonder one Yubeshi ball could cost 10 USD when we search them in stores. They can be very good tapas by themselves. People say combining the slice of Yubeshi with cheese goes superbly with wine. Naomi is enjoying them occasionally as luxurious afternoon snack with tea. Cherry blossoms are in full swing now …😊

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