I apologize for my ignorance. I was watching a random Japanese “Diner” type youtube cooking video, and the cook was sifting his hand through what looked like wet sand, and pulled out a cello-sponge. The translation/caption said “nuka pickle… from when the shop opened…” So, I looked it up and it looks like the chef was mixing up a damp, lactobacter innoculated blend of rice bran, then shoving sliced vegetables in the mix, where the vegetables are left to ferment. Sort of like the idea behind sourdough starter (but with lactobacter, not yeast).
I don’t think I’ve ever had these before, knowingly. Research says they can be very sour, or mild. I love pickles, but I doubt I’ll try to make these.
Has anyone eaten these/made these before?
Sure, my parents would use a little rye in the base to set off the fermentation. But I believe they both work on principles of lactofermentation. I do imagine the taste is slightly different, but will have that familiar lactic tang.
Absolutely. The base principle is lactobacterial fermentation, as discovered millenia ago in multiple cultures.
But beyond lactic acid tang, the choice of vegetables and additional flavoring ingredients has an impact.
So does the fact that a nuka bed is intended to be permanent and used over and over, maturing with time and environment exposure, and the resulting pickles gain tremendous flavor complexity and depth from being fermented in a years-old or even decades-old pickling bed.
So if your answer to OP’s question is “tastes no different than European-style fermented cucumber pickles”, you’re oversimplifying.
I’ll have to keep an eye out next time I’m at the Japanese grocery. I enjoy lactofermented foods from all around the world. Like you say, they all have their own spin, but it’s all familiar.
That’s right, it’s not the western-style salt brine lacto-fermentation as I understand it. The cook looked like he used daikon and cucumber cut into long strips, then shoved down into the lactobacillus-spiked wet rice bran. He said he was using it since the shop opened, presumably many years.
It was something I never knew about.
Chronos, I’m confused. Where in the Japanese name do you get “green squash” and added spices? Certainly, not something I ran across in my few years in Tokyo. Daikon is a giant turnip and not a green squash, although I guess it can have a greenish hue but usually an off white.
Sorry, I thought the cross-lingual pun was obvious. Zuke = zucchini, and nuke = very spicy. I just found it amusing that the Japanese name sounded like it could be a colloquial English name for a pickled vegetable.