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Vegetables from Hanamaki, Iwate, Japan

Kinkon-zuke (Hanamaki stuffed white-melon miso pickle)金婚漬

Kinkon-zuke is a shirouri melon, hollowed and salted, then stuffed with salted carrot, burdock and cucumber rolled tightly in kombu. The stuffed melons are laid in a barrel under miso, or in moromi, and left to age for a long time. Cut across, the amber melon shows the vegetables like a flower or a family crest.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Kinkon-zuke itself.

Short entryVegetables

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold and commercial pickle with no amounts published in the sources read.
Shirouri melonPicked in July–August; both ends cut off and the core hollowed out into a tube[maff-kinko]
SaltFor the first salting of the melon and of the filling[maff-kinko]
Carrot, burdock and cucumberSalted to draw out water and harshness[maff-kinko]
KombuWashed, drained and wound tightly round the filling[maff-kinko]
Miso, or moromi soy sauce[maff-kinko]
Shiso or chilli (optional)Sometimes stuffed in as well[maff-kinko]
Start
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Close-up: salt moving into a piece

What changes: The melon's ends are cut off, its core scooped out, and the tube is salted

Step 1 of 3
Cut the ends off the melon, hollow it out and salt it
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

The inside is scraped out with a bamboo spatula in the Wikipedia account. Output: salted melon tube.

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

Kinkon-zuke is a shirouri melon, hollowed and salted, then stuffed with salted carrot, burdock and cucumber rolled tightly in kombu. The stuffed melons are laid in a barrel under miso, or in moromi, and left to age for a long time. Cut across, the amber melon shows the vegetables like a flower or a family crest.

What makes this one different

Kinkon-zuke binds its filling with kombu and ages in miso. Chiba's teppō-zuke stuffs the melon with shiso-wrapped chilli and uses soy and mirin instead.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Yōkan-zuke (養肝漬, Iga, Mie)A similar stuffed shirouri in miso tamari; see iga-shirouri-teppozuke.
  • Teppō-zuke (Chiba)Stuffed with shiso-wrapped chilli in soy-mirin liquid.
  • Moromi versionPickled in moromi soy sauce instead of miso.

Safety

Low-salt versions are now sold; the sources give no salt or pH figures. Warabi, an occasional filling, is bracken fern, which contains the carcinogen ptaquiloside. Kim 2023 advises boiling soaked dried bracken for at least 20 minutes. That cut ptaquiloside by a median of about 96 %. At average daily intake, the study rated boiled bracken as safe at the median ptaquiloside level, not at the highest level it found. It did not test salting or miso ageing, so do not count on them to remove it.

History and sources

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

Iwate is snowbound, and families made keeping foods against bad harvests. Vegetables were put into miso to help it ripen, or to keep them. The name compares the long ageing to a couple who reach their golden wedding. Another story says the melon looks like kinko, a sea cucumber of the Iwate coast.

  1. [maff-kinko] Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), Nippon dentōshoku zukan (Japanese traditional foods guide), 金婚漬け(きんこづけ) (Iwate), read 2026-10gov
  2. [kim2023] Kim M.K. et al. 2023, Risk assessment and risk reduction of ptaquiloside in bracken fern, Toxics 11(2):115, doi:10.3390/toxics11020115paper
  3. [s1] Japanese Wikipedia, 金婚漬, read 2026-10-16wiki