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Many foods have been handed down to us from the past; but with the rapid Westernization of the Japanese diet following World War II, many traditional foods have all but disappeared. One exception is tsukemono—Japanese pickles. Born at least 1200 years ago, tsukemono continue to be loved by the Japanese even today. The word, translated literally, means foods preserved by immersing, and it encompasses not only vegetables but also fruit and fish—all of which can be preserved with condiments like vinegar and salt. Nowadays, though, it’s mainly pickled fruits and vegetables—ume plums, radishes, gourds, cucumbers, eggplant, to name a few—that people refer to as tsukemono.
Foods preserved in a similar manner can be found the world over: the Korean’s have their kimchee, the Chinese have their hot zhacai, and the Europeans have their pickles; Japan, however, seems especially well represented with over 500 types of tsukemono alone on the market.
It is believed that tsukemono had their start in Japan over a thousand years ago when fresh foods were immersed in a high concentration of salt to preserve them for longer periods. Being surrounded by ocean, Japan has always had plenty of salt. Both its geography as an archipelago stretching north–south over some 2,400 km (1,500 miles) and climate characterized by large differences in temperature provided ideal conditions for producing a wide variety of vegetables. Daikon radish, cucumber, eggplant and other vegetables were introduced into Japan from China and the Korean Peninsula around the eighth century. And then around the tenth century, when Japanese learned how to produce fermented condiments such miso (fermented soybean paste), soy sauce and vinegar, they started making tsukemono using these condiments to pickle whatever vegetables were in season.
Particularly unique to Japanese tsukemono is the way the vegetables or fruit are pickled by placing them in a tsukedoko, or “pickling bed,” and allowing them to mature. The tsukedoko is a wet mixture consisting mainly of rice bran, miso, or saké lees that spurs a fermentation process. Though itself is never consumed, the tsukedoko is what gives tsukemono their unique flavor—or flavors, since there are so many! The food to be pickled is immersed in the tsukedoko, and naturally occurring lactobacilli start to work. Adjusting the combination of fruits and vegetables, condiments, and tsukedoko ever so slightly yields a wide variety of tsukemono, and further flavor variations can be achieved by altering the length of time the pickles are left to mature in the pickling bed. |
