Umeboshi, the astringent preservation

What is this?

There's no exception, this picture makes Japanese mouse-watering in the literal meaning.

This is an umeboshi––ripped plum fruit preserved with salt.

The modus operandi of making umeboshi is ultimately simple.

Firstly, clean down the surface of very ripped plum fruits then give around 20% of coarse salt to the ingredient's weigh, that's all.

Japanese prepares the umeboshi in the middle of rainy season in June and finalize the preservation in the early summer days just after the rainy days.

After 7-8 weeks from the preparation, umeboshi will nearly finished in a container.

Japanese is very wiling to do the final dehydration for the umeboshi under the blue summer sky.

Because, the new umeboshi is kind of a metaphor for the good feeling of what the dark and humid rainy season has gone and very stable and bright summer days has come.

ingredient:

4kg Nanko Ume (ripped enough, bigger is better)

800g Coarse salt