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Fish and seafood from Japan

Gosai-zuke (Ibaraki salted saury and daikon)ごさい漬け

Gosai-zuke is an Ibaraki winter pickle of salted fish and daikon. Gutted saury, once sardines, are salted in a barrel for two to three weeks until they start to ferment, washed, cut and layered with daikon, carrot, chilli and yuzu peel under a weight for about two more weeks. It is eaten as it is or rinsed and dressed with a little soy sauce.

Fully documentedFish and seafood28 days – 44 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceOne 10-litre barrel, from the MAFF regional-dish recipe (information from Prof. Reiko Arata, Tokiwa University). Recipes vary by household.
Saury20Head and guts removed, blood washed out under running water[maff-gosai]
Salt for the first salting50 g[maff-gosai]
Extra salt after cutting30–40 g[maff-gosai]
Daikon, cut in chunks10[maff-gosai]
Carrots, cut in thick strips2[maff-gosai]
Yuzu, in thin shredsPeel of 3[maff-gosai]
Red chillies, in rings5[maff-gosai]

Total time across the recorded steps: 28 days – 44 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: The saury are headed and gutted, and blood and fat are washed out under running water

Step 1 of 4
Gut the saury and wash out the blood
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
L. mesenteroides
Lactobacillus curvatus
L. sakei

Heads and guts are removed and the belly is washed under running water until the blood and fat are gone.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Gosai-zuke is an Ibaraki winter pickle of salted fish and daikon. Gutted saury, once sardines, are salted in a barrel for two to three weeks until they start to ferment, washed, cut and layered with daikon, carrot, chilli and yuzu peel under a weight for about two more weeks. It is eaten as it is or rinsed and dressed with a little soy sauce. Made in 4 steps over 28 days – 44 days. The longest step, salt whole in a barrel until it starts to ferment, takes 14–30 days (MAFF Japan). Salt is 20 % (Koizumi Takeo Shoku Magazine editors 2016). Leuconostoc mesenteroides, followed by Lactobacillus curvatus and L. sakei, in daikon ippon-zuke, a related Japanese salted daikon pickle; gosai-zuke itself has not been studied does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step14–30 daysReported[maff-gosai][yomiuri2021][koizumi2016]Salt whole in a barrel until it starts to ferment
Salt20 %Reported[koizumi2016]Salt whole in a barrel until it starts to ferment

What makes this one different

Gosai-zuke pickles a fermented salted fish with fresh daikon in the same barrel, so the fish is part of a vegetable pickle. Japanese izushi such as hatahata-zushi use rice and koji instead, and nishin-zuke uses dried herring with daikon and cabbage in koji.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Sardine gosai-zukeThe older form, made from November with plentiful autumn sardines, best with katakuchi sardines; saury replaced it as sardine landings fell.
  • Cut-first gosai-zukeSome cut the fish before the first salting; salting it whole keeps a better shape.

Safety

The old method needs cold winter weather; warmer winters spoil it, so the fish should be salted in the refrigerator when it is warm. Lean fish keeps better than fatty fish. Japan's farm ministry (MAFF) names home-made izushi and similar fermented fish among the foods most exposed to botulism, and says the spores do not grow at 3.3 °C or colder or at pH 4.6 or lower. A refrigerator warmer than 3.3 °C does not meet that limit. The MAFF recipe's first salting (50 g for 20 saury) is far lighter than the 20 % of fish weight in the Mito home recipe, and no source we read gives a pH, so neither recipe is a tested safe method.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The name probably comes from 'kosai', a local word for small lean sardines suited to the pickle (Ishizaki Katsusaburō, Hokota no Bunka no. 35). Other stories link it to 後妻 'second wife' or 五彩 'five colours'. Fewer households make it now because it takes much work and warmer winters mean the old method no longer works; local fish shops still make and sell it. In 2021 a shop in Kashima planned to make less because poor saury catches had pushed prices up.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [maff-gosai] MAFF Japan, Uchi no kyōdo ryōri, Gosai-zuke (Ibaraki), information from Prof. Reiko Arata, Tokiwa Universitygov
  2. [maff-boto] MAFF Japan, hazard profile, Clostridium botulinum (food poisoning cases and control measures)gov
  3. [s1] Japanese Wikipedia, ごさい漬け (fetched 2026-10-16)wiki
  4. [tamakawa2017] Tamakawa H. 2017, Isolations of lactic acid bacteria from pickled daikon (Japanese white radish) and effect as inoculation of starter cultures on the fermentation, Iwate Industrial Technology Center research report no. 20gov
  5. [koizumi2016] Koizumi Takeo Shoku Magazine editors 2016, Jikiden! Ibaraki-ken no kyōdo ryōri, gosai-zuke (a home recipe from Mito), Marugoto Koizumi Takeo Shoku Magazineweb
  6. [yomiuri2021] Yomiuri Town News (unsigned article) 2021, Sobo ni manabu Kashima-nada no aji, Community Store Mizuno no gosai-zuke (Ibaraki, Kashima)web