Japanese Pickles

Japanese pickles are not quite a side dish and not quite a garnish. Those little yellow daikon pickles that come with a curry are a good example. Unlike Western pickles which need take some time to make, many kinds of Japanese pickles can be made in a few minutes and are ready to eat in a day. They do not, however, last forever like Western pickles and need to be eaten in a relatively short period.

A common way of making Japanese pickles is to simply slice the vegetables, coat with salt and place under pressure for half a day. The pressure is often applied with a "pickling stone" which is literally just a good sized rock from outside placed on a board, but you can also buy a "pickling press". Pickling presses are a little over priced because they are imported Japan, but are a little bit nicer than keeping a rock in the kitchen.

One of my goals with the garden this summer is to jar or preserve as much of the vegetables as possible. We tried a first batch for practice, it only took about 10 minutes to make and 1/2 a day to pickle and the results were not bad.

Here are two good recipe books and an example of a pickling press:

Quick & Easy Tsukemono: Japanese Pickling Recipes


Easy Japanese Pickling in Five Minutes to One Day: 101 Full-Color Recipes for Authentic Tsukemono

Tsukemono Japanese Pickle Press 2.2 L

http://www.theblackmoon.com is a good site which goes into more detail and also has a number of simple recipes.