Umeboshi, a pickled and dried apricot-like fruit popular in Japan, is said to have healing properties and is used in various dishes and drinks. The traditional salt curing method is being replaced by vinegar with additives, but umeboshi remains a staple in Japanese cuisine.
Umeboshi, a pickled and dried apricot-like fruit much loved by the Japanese, is both so salty and so tart that most Western palates find it, well, unpalatable. Macrobiotic enthusiasts claim that this wrinkled little fruit is a warrior against problems with digestion, infection, and bodily waste, a trait that is attributable to its highly alkaline chemical makeup. An umeboshi plum might be found curled up in a bed of white rice or a cup of tea like vinegar or in soups. While the taste might be acquired, umeboshi is firmly in the diet of many.
A true umeboshi vinegar is the result of the juices that collect in the wooden barrels in which the fruit was packaged at the time of harvest. The fruit, which ripens in early summer, is traditionally dressed in 20% salt, squeezed into barrels, and weighted down to encourage them to let out their juice. Umeboshi vinegar, called umezu, is not as easy to find as it once was as production methods are changing.
The Japanese and some Westerners claim that a long list of healing and restorative powers give the umeboshi plum a punch of two. It’s touted as everything from a hangover cure to a powerful solution to a bacterial infection. The traditional salt curing method doesn’t fight the health profile of the fruit. More and more manufacturers have begun using vinegar tinted with honey or kombu, a type of seaweed, along with a chemical preservative.
The umeboshi plum is so popular that even Japanese children are convinced that it is a treat. They ask for a crunchy candy version of the dried fruit, called karikari ume. Their parents have their own adult version of the treat, in which an umeboshi plum is hidden in the bottom of a shochu, which is a distilled schnapps-like cocktail.
Other common uses of umeboshi include adding it to dishes as a flavor enhancer or served as an appetite-enhancing food in a cup of hot water, called umeshu. Some people like umeboshi in combination with green tea. Umezuke, or ume that has been pickled and jarred rather than dried, is served as a side dish or condiment.
Many Japanese parents will try to get sick children to take okayu, a soup made with rice and umeboshi, when a cold has drained their energy. This is easier to do than you might think, since historically famous samurai warriors transformed into umeboshi when they were tired of battle. If it was good enough for the Samurai, most kids would decide it must be very good indeed.
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