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Yubeshi
Yubeshi — yuzu peel simmered thick in sugar and soy sauce
Yuzu peel is chopped and simmered down sweet and salty in sugar and soy sauce until thick, into a preserved side dish. In the Aioi district of Naka Town, among the country's leading yuzu-growing areas, it is said to be slow-cooked when the fruit ripens around November, then eaten as a side dish or with tea.
- Origin: Tokushima Naka
- About 540 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Yubeshi is a sweet-savory preserve made by finely chopping yuzu peel and slowly simmering it down with sugar and soy sauce. The citrus's bitterness and tartness meet the richness of sugar and the saltiness of soy sauce, and each bite releases a mild bitterness from the peel along with a burst of citrus aroma. It's said to have been made in home kitchens across the upper Naka River area around Naka town's Aioi district, as well as Katsuura and Kamikatsu, using locally grown yuzu. It's eaten as a side dish with rice, but also as a snack with sake or mixed into ochazuke.
How it's made
The chopped yuzu peel goes into a pot with plenty of water, starting from cold. The water is brought to a boil and changed several times to soften the bitterness, and then sugar and soy sauce are added and simmered slowly until the mixture turns sticky. The peel is sometimes sun-dried for storage first and rehydrated before simmering. The time and effort involved is what makes it keep well as a pantry staple.
Why it took this shape
The Naka town area gets heavy rainfall and a wide swing between day and night temperatures, conditions said to suit yuzu cultivation, so good-quality fruit has long been plentiful there. Making the most of the peel left over after squeezing juice around the November harvest peak appears to be one reason yubeshi came about. Sugar was once too scarce for the dish to be made often, but it's said to have spread once sugar became more common in home kitchens from the 1950s on, valued as a side dish for the season from autumn to spring when other dishes were scarce.
Before you go
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- Enjoying a bussanten (regional products fair)A guide to what's sold at a bussanten (regional products fair), how to find one, when it gets crowded, shelf life and taking food home, and how to fit one around a trip.
Dishes in the same style
- Agonoko UmaniThe roe of egg-bearing flying fish, caught only in early summer, is simmered in stock and soy sauce as an Oki bar snack. Its large grains and dense, sticky texture are prized as a delicacy said to be scarcer even than the fish's flesh.
- Funa MisoCrucian carp is simmered slowly with soybeans for around five hours, then finished in a sauce of red miso and coarse sugar. A freshwater fish dish of the Kiso rivers' lower basin, made with fatty winter carp simmered until the bones soften through.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Tokushima
- Amego no HirarayakiA flat stone is heated over a hearth for hours, then a border of miso is built on it to grill amego trout, stone tofu, and konjac — an outdoor dish from the Iya valley. Its name comes from hirara, a local word for a flat stone, and it is said to have long served as a dish for entertaining guests.
- Awa BanchaA post-fermented tea from Naka and Kamikatsu towns in Tokushima, fermented by lactic acid bacteria. Coarser leaves picked from midsummer on are boiled, packed into wooden barrels, fermented for roughly 10 days to two weeks, then sun-dried — said to give a refreshing sourness.
- Awa BitonRaised in the mountains of Awa City, Tokushima, at about 400 meters, on a feed centered on rice. Handlers are said to adjust the feed mix daily and avoid genetically modified crops where possible.
- Awa GyuPedigreed Japanese Black fattened in Tokushima, which gained recognition after being shown at a Tokyo meat market competition in 1962 — said to have a moist, fine-grained texture and modest fat.
- Awa no ItokoniSweet potato that has been boiled then dried — yude-boshi style — is rehydrated and simmered slowly with red beans for about two hours over low heat. Fitting for a region where drying vegetables is common in winter, it is said to be a warming side dish built on the concentrated flavor of dried sweet potato.
- Awa UiroRed bean paste mixed with rice flour and Awa wasanbon sugar is poured into a mold and steamed into a chewy cake. Said to have first been made to celebrate the completion of Awa wasanbon sugar in the Edo period, with related uiro cakes also found in Nagoya and Yamaguchi.