Yuzu

yuzu Yuzus are held in high esteem by Japanese chefs. The acidic fruit, which is used green or fully colored, is the key ingredient in Ponzu sauce and other Japanese specialties. The Yuzu is a unique citrus hybrid native to China and Tibet. It is widely used in Japan but is rare and highly sought after in the United States. The fruit is small to medium size with a rough, aromatic rind and has many, large seeds. It is usually used green or as it is just beginning to turn yellow. Yuzu juice is strongly acid but like the rind, has unique, piney-citrus flavor.

Japanese chefs used both the juice and the rind of Yuzu. The juice is often used to make Ponzu sauce, a citrus-soy combination that can also include bonita flakes (dried tuna).

More Yuzu Stories/Information

Recipes:

Yuzu Ponzu Sauce
Yuzu in Cocktails

Mixed Into a Martini, Drizzled Over Seafood, Turned Into Ice Cream, It's a Fragrant Citrus That Chefs Love to Squeeze

By Walter Nicholls
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 26, 2003; Page F01

Inside a greenhouse on Maryland's Eastern Shore, specialty farmer Ken Suzuki grows a small, relatively rare citrus fruit that has infatuated chefs around the world.

"Yuzu has a special smell that high-toned chefs like so much," says Suzuki, owner of Suzuki Farm, where more than 35 varieties of Japanese vegetables and fruits are cultivated. His six, 10-foot-high, seven-year-old yuzu trees yield 200 pounds of the coveted citrus per year.

"Chefs want the peel for miso soup and the juice for salad dressings and their tofu," he says. And the long list of distinctive uses for the little yuzu (pronounced YOU-zoo) goes on.

Stronger in flavor than lemon, with a hint of tangerine, grapefruit and pine, yuzu -- a hybrid of the C. ichangensis and C. reticulata species -- is native to China and Tibet. The fruit, about the size of a Mandarin orange, is commonly grown in Japan, where it's a popular culinary ingredient.

When harvested early in the season, yuzu is lime-colored, but by season's end, in late December, the fruits have turned a lemony yellow. But the demand for yuzu far surpasses the seasonal supply. So if fresh fruit is not available, yuzu lovers depend on products such as bottled juice, freeze-dried peel and prepared yuzu condiments (see box on Page F4).

Japanese cooks commonly blend fresh or bottled yuzu juice with rice vinegar, soy sauce and other ingredients for a ponzu dipping sauce for sashimi or grilled fish. The aromatic, thick, bumpy rind is grated and then added to soups and cooked vegetables.

"When you open the lid of a serving dish and the distinctive aroma of yuzu comes out, it's so delicate. There's no substitution," says Kaz Okochi, chef and owner of Kaz Sushi Bistro near George Washington University.

When whole yuzu fruits are available, Okochi hollows them and fills them with a cold lobster salad. Succulent, Nantucket Bay scallops are marinated in the juice for a ceviche. A single scoop of refreshing yuzu ice cream, accompanied by a cup of yuzu tea -- "My winter drink for Vitamin C" -- is the perfect way to end an evening at Kaz Sushi Bistro. Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, a native of Japan with restaurants in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Paris, London and Milan, offers more than a dozen recipes that call for this cultivar in "Nobu: The Cookbook" (Kodansha International, 2001). His signature yuzu dressing -- made with yuzu juice, soy sauce, garlic, black pepper and grapeseed oil -- is sublime atop a salad of assorted sauteed mushrooms.

But yuzu's sour flavor and exotic appeal have traveled beyond the Japanese kitchen. In Dublin, yuzu dresses a composed salad of potato and prawn. In Milan, Italian chefs whisk yuzu juice with their favorite regional olive oil as a dressing for bitter greens.

"It's more pungent than lemon and goes really well with fish. So, we use it in our tuna tartar with a yuzu mango sauce," says Thomas Keller, chef and owner of the French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley. Yuzu makes seasonal appearances on Keller's dessert menu starring as yuzu sorbet or yuzu gelatin.

In Chicago, at the Indian-Asian restaurant Monsoon, a tandoori marinated quail salad is dressed with a splash of yuzu. Chef Norman Van Aken, owner of Norman's restaurant in the Coral Gables section of Miami, calls this fruit "the sharpest note in the keyboard of flavor." Aken marinates chicken in yuzu juice, sesame oil and tamari. "Yuzu is so clean, bracing, the floridity. There is nothing quite like it," he says.

In New York, bartenders at boutique hotels shake or stir the yuzu martini, made with yuzu-infused sake. At the contemporary American restaurant Verbena near Gramercy Park, the nonalcoholic beverage of choice is sparkling yuzu-ade.

"People like it because it's perplexing to our flavor references," says chef and co-owner Michael Otsuka. "The yuzu taste has the sweetness of Meyer lemon as well as the sharp acidity of lime, a quality that is pretty on the palate."

Alison Chase, chef and co-owner of Aqua Terra in Annapolis, added yuzu to her menu one year ago. She uses the citrus in a ponzu sauce for pot stickers, as a dressing for a salad of daikon, cucumber and carrot and as an accent atop a grilled veal chop.

"I like to stay current with the trends. And I know [yuzu] has become really popular in San Francisco," says Chase, who shares restaurant responsibilities with her husband, Ken.

If yuzu has one drawback it is price. A single fruit, when available at Japanese markets in the Washington area, costs about $2.50. Wholesale distributors charge restaurants around $32 for a one-quart bottle of yuzu juice.

The considerable expense does not thwart chef Martin Saylor of Butterfield 9, a contemporary American restaurant in downtown Washington.

Says Saylor: "There is nothing better than yuzu, with its intense perfumelike flavor. It's really cool."

On any given day, Saylor offers dishes such as a terrific appetizer of yellowtail sashimi with yuzu sorbet, a rich entree of bison osso buco in a sauce of fermented soy bean and yuzu juice and a beautiful yuzu tart with blackberry sauce and ginger syrup.

But not every dish is an immediate success.

On a recent afternoon, Saylor and his sous-chef, Brandon Child, set their sights on a new yuzu-inspired entree. The proposed components: broiled lobster, a yuzu-flavored zabaglione and "pearl" couscous. At hand are half a dozen assorted yuzu preparations that include yuzu juice as well as pure and flavored yuzu peel purees and powders. The whisking and blending begins.

Some minutes later, the chefs raise forks. Then, Saylor takes a bite. "That's potent stuff. We should have gone with a little less yuzu," he says.

Child takes a bite. "If ever there was a work in progress, this is it. Let's ditch the zabaglione and go with a reduced yuzu juice with butter -- a yuzu beurre blanc," he says.

Work on this dish will continue -- but only in the Butterfield kitchen. "We never experiment on guests," says Saylor.

But yuzu is not limited to the kitchen.

On the evening of the winter solstice, in keeping with a tradition that is believed to encourage health, many Japanese enjoy a hot yuzu bath. Fruits bob on the surface. Yuzu is an of-the-moment ingredient in candles, as well as bath, fragrance and beauty products.

In a widely reported item, actress Sandra Bullock and "Chicago" star and Oscar nominee Renee Zellweger had their famous faces cleansed with an extract of yuzu in preparation for the Golden Globe awards. No doubt, with every squeeze, yuzu's star rises.

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Yuzu
Gourmet magazine, 2000

You've seen it on the menu at places like Matsuhisa in Los Angeles, Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, and Sono in New York City. And you've probably eaten it during the course of countless restaurant meals. But that doesnt mean you have a clue what yuzu actually is.

Introduced to Japan from China some 1,000 years ago, the mystery ingredient with the Dr. Seuss name is a cross between a wild citrus known as ichang papeda and a sour mandarin orange. The yellow, golf-ball-size fruit has a thick, rough-textured rind prized by Japanese cooks for its strong citrus aroma and a tangy juice that's used to enhance vinegars and dipping sauces.

Japanese immigrants in California have been growing yuzu trees in their backyards for over a century, but until recently the fruit wasn't widely cultivated here for commercial sale. Now that's changing. "Chefs are really intrigued," says Brian Hashizume of Japan California Products. "The fragrance of this fruit is different from that of other citrus."

In other words, expect to eat a lot more yuzu in the future. Of course, at something like $30 a pound, it'll likely be some time before we embrace the Japanese tradition of commemorating the winter solstice with a yuzu-scented bath.-David Karp

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Yuzu
Linda Burum
Los Angeles magazine, c. 1/03

At Mori Sushi in west L.A. chef-owner Mori Onodera is grating yuzu with a scaly piece of dry sharkskin. As tiny flakes of peel cascade from the ping pong ball-size citrus, a perfumey aroma wafts across the sushi bar making it easty to understand why the Japanese revere yuzu in the same way Europeans rhapsodize over truffles or saffron.

The bumpy yellow-green fruit, prized for its aromatic zest, is used to season everything from sashimi and soup to pastries. Hard core devotees even float the whole fruit in steaming bath water and inhale the fragrant, calming vapor.

Despite L.A.'s long-established Japanese population, yuzu has been completely off the restaurant radar. Now it's popping up in salads at Spago, appetizers at Chez Melange, and a yuzu-meringue tart at Mako. When I asked Onodera-a sushi man of stellar repute, what he could tell me about yuzu. He answered with an amazing all-yuzu dinner. The meal began with several sorts of sushi and sashimi. "Cutting is part of cooking," Onodera reminds me. For each course he would mince, chop, grate or sliver yuzu peel. And like the same note played on different instruments, these variations complimented each fish in a different way. To many dishes he added a squeeze of sudachi. Another small citrus, sudachi is often used for its juice in tandem with the pithier, drier yuzu.

Moving to less traditional dishes, Onodera put together a phenomenal salad of match stick-cut persimmon, wild arugula and albacore sashimi tossed with his yuzu dressing. Then came fresh sardines marinated with whole yuzu slices and a touch of olive oil.