honey drenched umeboshi;
So. A lot of things have happened recently. From my post last week about pecan saltine toffee, you know wedding planning is coming to a head! It’s fun to plan, but there are a lot of moving parts. But despite a full schedule of wedding planning, Tyler found an amazing deal on flights to Japan….so apparently we’re going now (in addition to our NZ honeymoon) in April of 2019! Crazy, right? I’m very much not an impulse shopper, especially for big things like international travel, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up given round trip tickets for one person were $700. You could even get it a bit under that if you didn’t mind a longer layover. Crazy, right?!
Tyler and I have a crazy long bucket list and Japan has always been on there, but we have so many other local and international trips on the list that it never occurred to either of us to make it top priority. But with a deal that good, we couldn’t pass it up. Then, to top it all off, immediately after booking we had to add a Japanese city to the application I develop at work, and I happened to find umeboshi at Mom’s Organic Grocery! So I figured this trip was meant to be.
For those who don’t know, “umeboshi” are pickled plums. If you’ve never seen or had one before, please keep reading before you run out and buy them! I thought they’d be like the dried ones I snacked on when I studied abroad in Japan, but I WAS SORELY MISTAKEN. Not like a little mistaken, more like an incredibly salt-filled mouthful in the car when I had no access to water for an hour. So word of warning to the wise. Don’t eat them straight because it’s like eating a salt cube with a sour flavor and a pit inside.
Because I was so sorely disappointed by how they tasted–not at all like I remembered–I did some research. I found that what I bought in Virginia were indeed “umeboshi”, but the dried plums I snacked on before were “hoshiume”. The main difference being that hoshiume are dried plums, but importantly–dried with sugars and sweeteners. The umeboshi pictured here have no sweeteners added, and are more traditionally used as a garnish or a paste, and mixed in small quantities with rice, spread on corn on the cob, etc. However, having dropped $16 on these umeboshi, I was determined to enjoy them.
In searching for the flavor I remembered in the dried hoshiume, I decided to try to add some sweeteners. Basically the best solution I came up with is to let them soak in honey. Considering they’re about marble sized and pickled, the sweetness doesn’t permeate all the way through so make sure to layer on extra honey as you eat them. With a heaping spoonful of honey, these can turn from an inedible puckering treat into a delicious snack. Make sure to nibble on these though, as even tiny bites still pack a powerful punch!
This barely warrants a recipe. Just add the umeboshi to a bowl and cover in honey. Enjoy immediately or allow to sit in the fridge overnight! They’re pickled, so they’ll take a long time to go bad…assuming they last that long!
honey drenched umeboshi;
Ingredients
- 1 package umeboshi I got mine at Mom's Organic Market, but you can also find them at Asian grocery stores
- 12 Tbsp honey
Instructions
- Drizzle approximately 1 Tbsp honey on each umeboshi and eat immediately, or allow to sit for anywhere between 5 minutes to overnight before serving if you'd like the sweetness to seep in more.
