umeshu pickles

Saw tomatoes pickled in umeshu (plum wine) on a television show, was intrigued and looked online to see if there was a recipe.

Most recipes that I found online used umeshu plus sugar but since umeshu is already sweet, I envisioned a recipe that didn't use added sugar.

Luckily Choya had a recipe.

Translated from Choya website: serves 2

1 cup umeshu

1/2 vinegar

1/2 water

5 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

1 chili pepper

1 turnip

1 cucumber

1/2 each red and yellow bell pepper

Bring the first 6 ingredients to a boil then cool

Peel and cut the veggies into bite sized pieces

Marinate in an air tight jar for at least 2 hours

NOTES: the original recipe used various veggies but since I wanted to try them with tomatoes that is what I used.

I first took out the stem area with a paring knife then made an "x" at the bottom.

Then to remove the skins of the tomatoes I put them in boiling water for 30 seconds and then put them into cold water for 30 seconds, the same way I make tomato suzuke

Since I only saw it on tv, I’m not sure what it should taste like but it was similar to tomato suzuke.

The umeshu flavor wasn't too present, probably because there are peppercorns, bay leaves and chili in there plus you burn off the alcohol before marinating the veggies.

Kinda wasteful of umeshu.

Still, I'm glad I tried this version.