It was time to harvest Ume plum (Ume in Japanese).
We pick Prunus mume deferent time depends on purpose. You can pick it when it’s green, if it is for syrup. Yellow-green for Umeboshi or Jam. When it is completely ripe(yellow and soft), it is for jam.
Ingredients:
4Kg Umeboshi – Prunus mume sour bomb
Prunus mume (Yellow-green) —4Kg
Salt —-800g
Red Shiso Leaves —-300g
Salt for shiso —-30g
Directions:
- Gently wash half ripen ume(half yellow half green),get rid of blemished one.
- Wipe off water with clean cloth, and take off stem end with tooth picker.
- Sterilize inside the container with alcohol. You can use glass jar or big pod as a container. Put Ume and salt alternately in the container. Put salt on the top, you don’t have to cover perfectly, but better put salt on the
surface. - Put 2kg weight, and put lid or covered with cloth.
- Wait 2-3 days until completely covered with liquid.
- Preparing red shiso leaves. Wash well red shiso leaf, and take off the water. Sprinkle salt(15g) and massage well with hand and squeeze well. Throw away black water comes form leaves, these are lye. Mix salt(15g) with red shiso leaves.
- Spread red shiso leaves on the ume, and leafReplace weight to 1kg.
- Wait about 1 month, and dry ume and shiso leaves in sunny day. It takes 3 days. Turn around 1 time in a day while drying
- Put them back in a jar with liquid ( it is called ume-zu) or you can just separate them and keep in a dark place in a house. You can start tasting but better wait 2 to 3 month, then salt goes into ume more.
