Nukazuke, Japanese Pickles

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Nukazuke, Japanese Pickles

This week, I made nukazuke (ぬかづけ, 糠漬け), a type of Japanese pickle made by fermenting vegetables in rice bran (nuka), for my first time. Tonight, my husband and I had these pickles, and we really loved them. They were salty and had umami, so they were perfect with steamed white rice. :) However, I don't know if you like nukazuke because it might taste too Japanese to you.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to make nukazuke from scratch in Japan. Making traditional nukazuke is not easy at all. You need to prepare nukadoko (糠床, ぬかどこ), which contains rice bran, salt water and etc. Then, add your favorite vegetables, and you need to stir them well with your hand one to two times a day for months. The nukadoko has the live active organisms such as lactobacilli which increases umami in it. I had never thought I would make nukazuke because it sounds a lot of work to me. However, I found this easy nukazuke kit, Chiyoda Momina (チヨダもみーな), which was on sale at Tokyo Central, a Japanese supermarket in the U.S. I am sometimes surprised that Tokyo Central has many interesting Japanese products! Anyway, I decided to try it for my first time.

According to the instruction, just open the pack of nukadoko, and move it into the pack. Add vegetables and massage the package. Keep it in a refrigerator for 10 to 36 hours. Rinse the pickles and enjoy!

You can add cucumbers, carrots, Japanese radishes and eggplants. You can repeatedly use the same nukazuke pack until nukadoko becomes watery (Usually you can use it about 4 to 8 times). When it's time to replace the nukazuke pack, it suggests that you should add fish or squids for the final nukazuke.

We decided to make cuccumber and Japanese radish nukazuke first.

If truth be told we totally forgot about our nukazuke. After keeping it in our refrigerator for 48 hours (usually up to 36 hours), I took them out of it. Then, I rinsed them with running water.

Then, I cut and served them. It was incredibly easy! Today, I added some baby carrots in the nukazuke pack. I'm looking forward to how my carrot nukazuke turns out. :) The only problem I found is that we cannot eat so many pickles at a time...