Fermented & preserved ── Tsukemono (pickles)
Sunki-zuke
Sunki-zuke — a salt-free, lactic-fermented turnip green from the Kiso valley
Red-turnip greens fermented by lactic bacteria alone, with no salt at all — a pickle unique to the mountain-locked Kiso valley, where, tradition says, salt was too precious to spare for it.
- Origin: Nagano Kiso
- About 190 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
The leaves come from turnip varieties raised in the Kiso valley, roughly six of them tied to specific villages, including Kaida kabu, Otaki kabu, and Mitake-kurose kabu. With no salt used at all, the pickle carries a sourness unlike ordinary tsukemono, driven by natural lactic bacteria said to concentrate where the stem meets the root; recent research suggests the bed holds a range of lactic bacteria rivaling yogurt.
How it's made
The leaves are scalded in roughly 60°C water to sterilize them, then layered in a container with sunki-dane — starter made from the previous year's sunki, dried or frozen. Hot water at around 45°C is poured over, and a day in a warm spot brings out the sourness; because the bacteria die off at high heat, temperature control matters a great deal. Older practice is said to have used a starter fermented from wild fruit such as zumi crabapples gathered in the mountains.
Why it took this shape
The Kiso valley sits far from the sea, and salt is said to have been so precious there that people said you could lend rice but never salt — sunki-zuke is described as a piece of household ingenuity built around saving it. A renku verse from Basho's circle already mentions “Kiso's sour stem as spring draws to a close,” and a document some 150 years old records a sunki dish being served, suggesting the fermented food has been made for at least three hundred years.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- How to shop in a depachika (department store food hall)A guide to browsing prepared foods and bento, choosing wagashi as a gift with a good shelf life, sampling etiquette, end-of-day discounts, asking for cold packs and wrapping, and finding your way around a depachika floor.
- 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
- Bettara-zukeDaikon salted first, then pickled sweet in rice malt and sugar — said to descend from a lightly pickled daikon once sold at Edo's ebisu-kō market. The rice malt gives it a natural sweetness, and it still headlines Nihonbashi's autumn "Bettara Market."
- Fukujin-zukeSeven kinds of vegetables — daikon, eggplant, lotus root among them — diced and steeped in a soy-based marinade. Said to have originated in Tokyo, it's best known today as curry rice's standard side.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
- Nozawana-zukeA leaf-mustard pickle put up in bulk to see Nagano through winter. A turnip once brought from Kyoto is said to have changed in the cold highlands of Nozawa Onsen, growing only leaf and stem — sweeter and softer the more frost it takes.
- Hida Akakabu-zukeWhole turnips salted down in barrels — a preserve from the snowbound Hida region. The skin's pigment bleeds crimson into the flesh as fermentation proceeds, in a method said to date to the Edo period, when it helped stretch precious salt.
Also from Nagano
- Anyoji RamenSaku's miso ramen built around Anyoji miso, held to be the root of Shinshu miso.
- Gudakusan Miso ShiruRoot vegetables like daikon, carrot, and burdock go generously into this everyday miso soup of Nagano. Packing it with vegetables is said to allow less miso overall, and wheat dumplings are sometimes dropped in to make it a meal in itself.
- HangoroshiSticky rice, pounded only halfway to a texture called hangoroshi, is coated in sweet bean paste or roasted soybean flour — eastern Nagano's version of botamochi and ohagi, called one name in spring and the other in autumn, a festive sweet that busy farm households could put together quickly.
- Hitashi MameGreen soybeans are boiled until still faintly crisp, then steeped in a lightly seasoned dashi — a dish of northern and eastern Nagano also made with the saddle-marked kurakake bean, sometimes paired with herring roe as part of New Year's osechi.
- Hoshikabocha no EgomaaeKabocha squash, sliced into strips and sun-dried until brittle, is rehydrated and tossed in ground perilla seed — a preserved dish of the Kinasa area born from the need to keep squash, which spoils easily over winter, also used simmered or as filling for oyaki.
- Hoba MakiRice-flour dough kneaded with hot water wraps sweet bean paste, then steams inside a magnolia leaf — a Kiso festival mochi. With no oak trees in the mountains, magnolia stood in, and locals say the leaf's scent settles in best the next day.