Tsukemono Guide: How to Prepare Japanese Pickles

Tsukemono is the Japanese word for pickles and describes a wide variety of pickling styles and veggies. Tsukemono are an essential part of a traditional Japanese meal, often served as side dishes, palate cleansers, and condiments.

The traditional way to make tsukemono involves a four-step process:

1. 1. Remove the excess liquid from vegetables. Reduce the amount of liquid that the vegetables will release during the pickling process by salting, drying, and/or pressing. Extracting excess liquid will give the pickles a more concentrated flavor, while salting and drying will yield more flexible and tender vegetables.
2. 2. Rinse the vegetables. Rinsing the vegetables after their first salting can help control the amount of salt in the final product, but some recipes skip this step.
3. 3. Make a brine. A brine preserves the vegetables and gives tsukemono their unique flavor. The simplest brine consists of water and salt. When left at room temperature, a saltwater brine allows the growth of lactic acid bacteria, which ferment the vegetables and create an acidic environment that discourages undesirable bacteria from growing.
4. 4. Be patient. Some tsukemono can be ready in an hour, while others take months—or even years—to mature.

Tsukemono are broadly categorized by their pickling agent, which can vary from sake to salt brine. Paste-like brines require a longer fermentation process than pickles made with a high concentration of vinegar, which adds acidity without fermentation.

1. 1. Shoyuzuke: Shoyu pickles are made by combining shoyu sauce with rice vinegar and sake, then pouring the liquid brine over the vegetables. One of the most popular soy sauce-brined pickles is fukujinzuke, made with a mix of eggplant, cucumber, daikon radish, and lotus root.
2. 2. Asazuke: Asazuke, which translates to “shallow pickle,” is made by briefly soaking vegetables in a saltwater brine, sometimes with the addition of kombu (kelp) for umami flavor.
3. 3. Miso-zuke: Chopped vegetables are layered with miso paste to make miso-zuke. These miso pickles are typically fermented for months, sometimes years.
4. 4. Kasuzuke and nara-zuke: Kasuzuke and nara-zuku are brined in a thick paste of sake lee, the leftover rice and yeast from sake production. Like miso-zuke, kasuzuke are typically fermented for several months and up to years.
5. 5. Koji-zuke: Koji is fermented rice used to make miso and sake. Tsukemono fermented with koji tend to be sweet and are often fermented for just a few days or weeks.
6. 6. Nuka-zuke: These pickles are made from rice bran, the outer coating of the rice grain that gets removed when processing white rice. Since white rice is such an important part of Japanese cuisine, rice bran is a widely available pickle substrate. The rice bran is mixed with salt, water, and sometimes other seasonings to form a paste called nukadoko, which is layered around the vegetables for pickling.
7. 7. Shiozuke: Shiozuke means "salt pickles," and its pickling method is similar to Western fermentation techniques. To make shiozuke, vegetables are either rubbed with salt and weighed down to form their own brine, or simply submerged in saltwater.
8. 8. Furu-zuke: When any type of tsukemono turns sour with age, it is called furu-zuku (old pickles).

You can turn almost any vegetable into tsukemono, but these are some of the most popular in Japan:

1. 1. Daikon radish: Daikon radishes are used in a variety of pickles, including yellow takuan, made with whole daikon radishes pickled in rice bran for six months or longer. (The yellow color comes from either a particular strain of bacteria or from natural or artificial coloring).
2. 2. Napa cabbage: This Asian cabbage variety is popular in Japanese cooking, and it’s a common type of tsukemono. A salt brine works great for this vegetable.
3. 3. Cucumber: Japanese cucumbers are a popular choice for quick pickles and soy sauce pickles.
4. 4. Eggplant: Whether slathered in miso or brined in soy sauce, this summer fruit is one of the most common tsukemono veggies.
5. 5. Ume: This apricot-like fruit is famous for its role in umeboshi, a salt-brined pickle that gets its deep color from red shiso leaves. (It's also one of the most popular fillings in onigiri, Japanese rice balls.)
6. 6. Ginger: Submerge young ginger, which is naturally light pink, in a vinegar brine to make pickled sushi ginger, called gari in Japan. Thinly slice the pickled ginger, and serve it as a condiment with sushi. Beni shoga, which has a darker color due to pickling in umezu (umeboshi vinegar), is commonly served with yakisoba and gyudon.
7. 7. Turnips: Thinly sliced turnips are the star of senmai-zuke, a vinegar-brined pickle popular in Kyoto.

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