Using the Whole Yuzu

Minoh City's mascot is named Yuzuru, a cute yuzu-citrus-headed samurai. The region is known for it's large yuzu fruits, although I haven't seen any that are abnormally sized yet.

I got a cheap pack of four small yuzu at Gyomu Super for 100 yen, mostly because they are locally grown, in season, and much cheaper than lemons. The flavor is different, but can be used in just about the same way. (I generally see them used for their juice in yuzu ponzu or squirted onto fish.)

The reason I wanted lemons in the first place, is I had plans to make ginger syrup. I make this often during winter as it's super easy to make (I found a Martha Stewart recipe online - three ingredients, including water) and is the type of versatile syrup I have used on pancakes, but mostly to make tea.

Ginger has warming properties, perfect for this colder-than-usual winter. I also get dust allergies around this time of year and have had an off and on scratchy throat.

I'm sure you've heard of honey lemon ginger tea?

So the yuzu are squeezed.

(I actually did that freezing the juice in the ice cube tray for later trick. It resulted in me forgetting for a couple days, wondering where to put frozen yuzu juice cubes, and cleaning a sticky ice cube tray.)

Now what?

I found a lovely recipe online, as I'm currently cooking in Japanese. (More on this later as the story unfolds more.) It's for a topping called yuzu neri, which actually uses the skin of the citrus fruit. (The wordy Japanese recipe is in the link.)

This is not the first time to see or make something using the skin of a citrus (like marmalade) but the first time I've used a proper recipe to make this type of citrus skin-as-food.

After these yuzu were squeezed, the sneaky remaining seeds were also removed. The fleshy part is fine as is. They were then thinly sliced.

The idea is, bite size small after they are thinly sliced. It's easy enough.

Then there are only two other ingredients. I really love the recipes with just a few ingredients. It is truly my style of cooking.

It says for each yuzu, use about a tablespoon and a half of sugar. But also that you should adjust according to your preference. I think I used way less sugar than that because I don't like overly sweet things (and don't measure things). It was a little sour at first but later on was just right. 

The last ingredient is soy sauce. A splash, again more or less as you like.

The recipe says to assemble and mix this in a bowl. I'm such a pro chef (sarcasm) that I have no mixing bowl. This was put into a plastic storage container of barely containable size, closed, and shaken for a while.

It's great!

We used it to top our curry udon the other night, and tonight on tan tan nabe. It's a welcome balance to any of the spicy foods you might be enjoying this season.