Sloe-boshi (a sacreligious seasonal version of umeboshi)

Name: Sloe-boshi (a sacreligious seasonal version of umeboshi)
Total time: 600 s
Yield: 300g Umeboshi
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: 300 g sloes; 30 g salt

Rob Figg @cook_26761981

Bath, UK

In Japan, there's a character called Suppaman. He's a bit like superman, but Suppa means sour. In the video below, he's just eaten Umeboshi. That should give you a good idea of how these things taste. https://youtu.be/xQgbdfwqSkw?t=38

Umeboshi is a fermented sour plum. Ume means plum, and boshi means dried. The Ume in umeboshi isn't really a plum at all though, it's a kind of apricot. Anyway, it's reportedly famous for its numerous qualities such as preventing nausea and curing hangovers. Also for recovering from exercise thanks to the large amount of citric acid (thanks for the tip Akinori). Sounds good.

But this is sloeboshi, and an experiment that I have not undertaken before, so who knows what this will taste like.

As part of the deep-dive into sloes, I thought I'd give it a try. I've adapted Mark Diacono's recipe from his great book, Sour.

But this is sloeboshi, and an experiment that I have not undertaken before, so who knows what this will taste like.

As part of the deep-dive into sloes, I thought I'd give it a try. I've adapted Mark Diacono's recipe from his great book, Sour.

Rob Figg @cook_26761981

Bath, UK

But this is sloeboshi, and an experiment that I have not undertaken before, so who knows what this will taste like.

As part of the deep-dive into sloes, I thought I'd give it a try. I've adapted Mark Diacono's recipe from his great book, Sour.

But this is sloeboshi, and an experiment that I have not undertaken before, so who knows what this will taste like.

As part of the deep-dive into sloes, I thought I'd give it a try. I've adapted Mark Diacono's recipe from his great book, Sour.

Saved

Ingredients

10 mins

300g Umeboshi

300 gsloes
30 gsalt

Saved

Steps

10 mins

1

Gather up your ingredients. You'll need 10% of the weight of your sloes in salt. You'll also need a jar to ferment them in, and a sandwich bag to act as a weight.
2

Rinse your sloes
3

Mix the sloes and salt
4

Pack them into the jar, then add the sandwich bag on top. Fill it a bit with water to act as a weight.
5

Now wait. Over the next few days, the liquid will start to leach out of the sloes and mix with the salt to create a brine, which will cover the tops of the sloes. The sloes will ferment in the brine, and after 10 days should be done. Give one a try. Once they're done, drain of the liquid (keep it), and dehydrate the sloes. I'll add steps once I have got this far!