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Vegetables from Kiso district, Nagano, Japan

Sunki (salt-free turnip-leaf pickle)すんき

Sunki is an unsalted lactic pickle of red turnip leaves from the Kiso valley. The leaves are dipped in hot water, layered warm with a seed of last year's sunki and some of the cooking water, kept warm for about a day and then left to sour slowly in the cold until the pH is about 3.7–4.3.

Fully documentedVegetables24 h

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedThe GI specification sets the method but no amounts. A recipe from Nagano Furusato Taikenkan on the MAFF regional-cuisine page gives 3 kg of turnip greens to 700 g of sunki seed per batch [maff-sunki]. Per the GI, the first batch is then used as seed for further batches, repeated several times to build up the quantity [gi-sunki].
Red turnip leaves and stemsSometimes with chopped hypocotyl, which tints the brine pink[gi-sunki]
Sunki seed (sunki-dane)Last year's sunki or brine, kept chilled, frozen or dried, or four lactic bacteria isolated from sunki[gi-sunki]
The blanching water, cooled to about 45 °C[maff-sunki]
Saltnone[gi-sunki]
Starterbackslop (sunki-dane from the previous year's batch, or isolated lactic acid bacteria)

Total time across the recorded steps: 24 h

Start
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What changes: Starting material: red turnip leaves picked after the first frosts

Step 1 of 6
Pick the red turnip leaves after frost
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactobacillus
L. delbrueckii
L. fermentum
L. plantarum

Two or three frosts on the turnip fields in late October to November are said to matter; batches made too early fail [gi-sunki]. Output: frosted turnip leaves and stems.

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

Sunki is an unsalted lactic pickle of red turnip leaves from the Kiso valley. The leaves are dipped in hot water, layered warm with a seed of last year's sunki and some of the cooking water, kept warm for about a day and then left to sour slowly in the cold until the pH is about 3.7–4.3. Made in 6 steps over 24 h. The longest step, keep warm for about a day, takes 24 h (MAFF 2017). Salt is 0 % (MAFF 2017). Lactobacillus species, dominant in all 29 samples studied and Lactobacillus otakiensis do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step24 hSet[gi-sunki][maff-sunki]Keep warm for about a day
Temperature60 °CReported[maff-sunki]Blanch leaves and stems
Salt0 %Set[gi-sunki]Layer warm with seed and cover with cooking water
AciditypH 3.7–4.3Set[gi-sunki]Move to a cold place and ferment slowly

What makes this one different

Sunki uses no salt at all. The leaves are blanched and soured by last year's seed [gi-sunki]. It comes from a cold highland, where the yearly mean is 7.4 °C in Kaida highland, and two or three frosts on the turnip fields before harvest are said to matter [gi-sunki]. Other unsalted leaf pickles, such as Niigata izekomi-na and Fukui sunana-zuke, are made in very small amounts [gi-sunki].

Related ferments

Safety

Sunki has no salt, and the GI sets the finished pH at about 3.7–4.3 [gi-sunki]. In a study, an accidental insufficient pH drop during fermentation seriously reduced the product's quality [tomita2024]. With no salt, acid is the main guard against Clostridium botulinum. Snyder et al. say a vegetable ferment that fails to reach below pH 4.6 should be discarded, and that in low-salt ferments the pH can rise back above 4.6 [snyder2020]. CDC says the toxin cannot be seen, smelled or tasted, so taste is no test of safety [cdc-prev].

History and sources

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

A linked verse from a Bashō-school gathering, around 1688, names "Kiso no sunki", and the GI and MAFF conclude from it that sunki is at least 300 years old [gi-sunki, maff-sunki]. In 1740 an Owari domain samurai, Mimura (三村森軒), wrote that in Kiso villages "suguki" was daikon greens boiled and kept in tubs as food until the next summer; the GI reads this as sunki, since no salt is used [gi-sunki]. A 1850 menu from Ōtaki village lists sunki. In 1983 Nagano designated sunki pickling a selected intangible folk cultural property, and sunki was registered as a GI on 26 May 2017 [gi-sunki].

  1. [snyder2020] Snyder A., Breidt F., Andress E.L. and Ingham B.H. 2020, Manufacture of traditionally fermented vegetable products, best practice for small businesses and retail food establishments, Food Protection Trends 40(4), 251–263paper
  2. [cdc-prev] CDC, Preventing botulism (botulism prevention page), read 2026-11gov
  3. [gi-sunki] MAFF, Geographical Indication register no. 34, すんき (sunki), registered 26 May 2017 (register entry with production method)spec
  4. [maff-sunki] MAFF うちの郷土料理 (Our Regional Cuisines), すんき漬け (Nagano)gov
  5. [tomita2020] Tomita S., Watanabe J., Nakamura T., Endo A., Okada S. 2020, Characterisation of the bacterial community structures of sunki, a traditional unsalted pickle of fermented turnip leaves, J Biosci Bioeng 129(5):541–551, doi:10.1016/j.jbiosc.2019.11.010 (abstract)paper
  6. [tomita2024] Tomita S., Inaoka T., Endo A., Okada S. 2024, Raw material-dependent changes in bacterial and compositional profiles are involved in insufficient pH decrease in natural lactic fermentation of Brassica rapa leaves, Food Chem 437:137934, doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137934 (abstract)paper
  7. [tomita2018] Tomita S., Nakamura T., Okada S. 2018, NMR- and GC/MS-based metabolomic characterization of sunki, an unsalted fermented pickle of turnip leaves, Food Chem 258:25–34, doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2018.03.038 (abstract)paper
  8. [doi2013] Doi K., Mori K., Mutaguchi Y. et al. 2013, Draft genome sequence of D-branched-chain amino acid producer Lactobacillus otakiensis JCM 15040T, isolated from a traditional Japanese pickle, Genome Announc 1(4):e00546-13paper