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Fruit from Amami

Papaya-zuke (green papaya miso pickle)パパイヤ漬け

Unripe green papaya is peeled, seeded, salted under a weight for 2–3 days, dried in the sun for a day and then layered with miso and sugar under a weight. It can be eaten from about the tenth day. The pickle is a salt and miso cure.

Fully documentedFruit13 days – 14 days

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceMAFF's regional-cuisine recipe for one pickling tub, from two Amami cookbooks. Salt and flavour differ from household to household.
Green papaya, halved, peeled and seeded3 kg[maff-papaya]
Salt150 gFor the first salting[maff-papaya]
Miso1 kg[maff-papaya]
Sugar50 gMixed into the miso[maff-papaya]

Total time across the recorded steps: 13 days – 14 days

Start
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What changes: Unripe papaya is cut in half lengthwise, peeled and seeded

Step 1 of 5
Halve, peel and seed the green papaya
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
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

Unripe green papaya is peeled, seeded, salted under a weight for 2–3 days, dried in the sun for a day and then layered with miso and sugar under a weight. It can be eaten from about the tenth day. The pickle is a salt and miso cure. Made in 5 steps over 13 days – 14 days. The longest step, layer with miso and sugar under a weight, takes 10 days (MAFF うちの郷土料理 (Our Regional Cuisines)). Salt is 5 % (MAFF うちの郷土料理 (Our Regional Cuisines)).

Key numbers
Main step10 daysReported[maff-papaya]Layer with miso and sugar under a weight
Salt5 %Reported[maff-papaya]Salt under a weight

What makes this one different

Papaya-zuke treats the unripe papaya as a vegetable. Soy sauce and sake-lees versions are also made, and the national traditional-foods guide describes a soy sauce and sugar version.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Shōyu-zuke and kasu-zukeSoy sauce or sake-lees versions instead of miso [maff-papaya].
  • Garlic or kimchi flavourGarlic and kimchi flavours also exist [maff-dentou].

Safety

The 1973 Kagoshima Prefectural Industrial Test Station report says raw papaya spoils very easily and must be processed soon after picking. It says that in the older method the salted papaya was dried before it went into seasoned miso, and the drying could brown the fruit or, if the weather stretched it out, let the papaya deteriorate or become contaminated. To avoid this the report proposes pressing the water out or drying quickly, or soaking the salted papaya in a seasoning liquid before the final miso bed [kagoshima1973].

History and sources

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

Papaya is said to have reached Amami from Okinawa after the Second World War, while the islands were under US administration. It grew easily in the warm climate and helped in the years of food shortage, and papaya-zuke is thought to have arisen from ways of using it [maff-papaya]. Kagoshima named papaya-zuke one of its 28 representative local dishes in 2016 [maff-dentou]. A 1973 report of the Kagoshima Prefectural Industrial Test Station (Higashi et al.) tested miso and sake-lees papaya pickles as tourist foods and noted that the few firms already selling papaya pickle had many production problems [kagoshima1973].

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [maff-papaya] MAFF うちの郷土料理 (Our Regional Cuisines), パパイヤ漬け (Kagoshima); recipe from 奄美の食と文化 (Kuru Hiromi) and 奄美の伝統料理 (Izumi Kazuko)gov
  2. [maff-dentou] MAFF にっぽん伝統食図鑑 (Japan traditional foods guide), パパイヤ漬 (Kagoshima)gov
  3. [kagoshima1973] 東邦雄, 水元弘二, 盛敏, 前田フキ 1973, 観光特産食品開発に関する調査研究(第9報) パパイヤ及びキリンサイの加工について (Survey study on developing tourist specialty foods, report 9, processing of papaya and kirinsai), 鹿児島県工業試験場年報 (Kagoshima Prefectural Industrial Test Station annual report) 20:77-81gov