making my own umeboshi FAIL

dang it, I was making umeboshi, pickled plum. sounds yucky but honestly, its quite tasty and not something you need to acquire taste for.

I want to make my umeboshi on low salt side so I use the absolute minimum salt required for proper fermentation of the fruit. I use ripe apricot instead of ume plums. And sometimes, it fails. Checked the pickling process and it had green mold on the top of the liquid. So I poured the liquid down the drain and soaked the partially fermented apricots in water to leach out salt. Then it went into the compost pile.

Whooey!!!

I hope I can still buy some organic ripe apricots. I've made them from apriums, pluots and apricots. Never worked out with plums, the fruit always split open with plums.

If I don't make any new batch this year, I'm going to be out for over a year. I like my umeboshi to age for about 8 month. Buying umeboshi is out of the question. They are $$$. I don't want to spend $20/pound..

I guess I should up the amount of salt :eek: I don;t have this problem yet with kosher style pickles I make. both are very good eats!!

Japanese cuisine have lots and lots of pickles. Make pickles out of turnip, chinese (napa) cabbage, cucumber, egg plant, raddish (daikon), pickling melon to name a few. It was the traditional go to method to make sure the food was safe. Pre petrol-chemical based fertilizer, Asian farmers used nightsoil (poop) to fertilize the soil. It would be composted but occasionally, compost would not kill all the pathogens. Pickling took care of that.

okay TMI

What do you eat umeboshi with? Clearly I don't enough about Japanese cuisine yet. Once upon a time, we did occasionally eat dried salted plums from Chinatown.

I've been playing with fridge pickles for a little while. They make a nice little something to tuck into the corner of my lunch. (I take a bento box to school, since it fits in the fridge nicely, and let's face it, it's kind of fun!) I'd love to try umeboshi (not making them! eating them!), but even the packaged ones tend to be hard to find around here. Sorry yours didn't work out!

Shootingstar: Here's some light reading for you: http://www.justhungry.com/googlesear...=1272j281234j8
I think the 3rd link down might be good, though I haven't read it yet. I know it's a traditional filling in onigiri (rice balls), but beyond that I don't know. :)

I just eat them. :) Very good for digestion.

Never tried to make them though. I had fun making lacto fermented cucumber pickles last summer and hope I'll have enough cukes this year to do it again. Good luck with your next batch!

mmmmmm I love umeboshi, usually just with some rice. I like the tiny hard ones that we got in Osaka (and then I found them here at Uwajimaya… I swear they didn't have them before). I've never tried making them though. I have tried and had a fail at miso… umm it's still in the basement in the crock, it might be scary to open by now. Then again I'm wondering if it wasn't salt crystals that I saw in the crock and not mold. I should probably take the thing outside and open it up.

SUCCESS!! with pickled plum! Just need to dry out in the sun and back into the jars.

Meanwhile made dill pickle using natural fermentation. They then were canned in water bath to stop the fermentation for on the shelf storage.

Right now pickling more dill pickles because I just don't have enough. Some days, I can just sit and eat a whole quart of pickles in one sitting. Another vegetable is pepperoncini again using natural fermentation. I've added bay leaf and few cloves of garlic. After the fermentation, they too will be canned in water bath so they can be stored on a shelf.

My summer turnips were bugged out with wire worm so they were thrown away in garbage. Not risking my compost pile with god awful pests.

Japanese pickling is slightly different than european style. So I'm making shiozuke (pickling using salt and no water) for cucumber, turnip (I have to go buy some. How awful is that!), eggplants. May even try making misozuke (miso based pickling) using summer squash. umm have to pickle some beets too.
And getting around to making basic sauerkraut using our summer cabbage since I'm all out. Later in November I'll make more.

Lastly, I found a place to order plain rice bran so I can make my own nukamiso for pickling vegetables: turnip, cucumber, nasu (japanese egg plants), daikon (big asian radishes). veggies pickled in nukamiso have a very different taste than plain salt based. I think it tastes better. Try it!!

do love my pickles...

Already have about twenty small jars of sweet zucchini pickles. yumm!! My pantry is getting re-stocked!!

and oh yes we do make our own jellie and jams. Home made red currant jelly is yummy!! Strawberry, blueberry, marion berry, logan berries from our yard. Not from my farm.