Japan's Pickles & Preserved Vegetables

About this book

Every Japanese meal comes with a small dish that does quiet, essential work — and for most visitors, it is the dish they cannot name. Japan's Pickles & Preserved Vegetables opens all 200 jars.

Organised the way Japan's own makers think, this complete guide travels through every pickling medium: quick salt pickles and overnight asazuke; the living rice-bran bed of nukazuke, stirred daily by hand; deep miso and sake-lees pickles, including Nara's centuries-old narazuke; jewel-bright vinegar pickles from Kyoto's thousand-slice turnips to sushi-counter ginger; soy, koji, amazake and mustard beds; the great regional pickles — Akita's hearth-smoked iburigakko, Shiga's funazushi, Nagano's nozawana greens, Okinawa's tofuyo; and a full part on makers, crocks, salts and the pickling calendar, so you can start a jar of your own.

Each of the 200 entries tells you where a pickle belongs, where you will meet it, when it is at its best, and — in two full paragraphs written for that jar alone — how it is made, how it tastes, and how to choose, keep, or serve it. Nothing is repeated from entry to entry, and there are indexes by region and a glossary of pickling terms to help you shop any pickle shelf in Japan with confidence.

Whether you are planning a trip, standing puzzled in a depachika food hall, or keeping your first bran bed on a kitchen counter, this is the one English guide to Japanese pickles you will actually finish — and keep beside the rice cooker.

Written and produced in Japan by a Japanese author and a Japanese publisher, Aki Wakamatsu and Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC — the real shelf, from the people who eat from it every day.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.