Customer Reviews

Easy Japanese Pickling in Five Minutes to One Day: 101 Full-Color Recipes for Authentic Tsukemono

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is full of color photos, not just of finished dishes, but of the main ingredients before cooking. This is especially helpful for those of us who are not Japanese and who do not know what a particular Japanese ingredient is. Of course many of these ingredients may not be available in regular supermarkets, but if you go to an Asian supermarket, especially a Japanese specialty store, you will find them there. Personally I never liked Western style pickles (too sour) so I am happy to find this book. I like to make them the night before so I have pickled vegetables the next morning for breakfast, along with hot cereal that's cooked overnight from a crock pot - I hate cooking for breakfast in the morning! These pickles are so refreshing they are great when eaten with a heavy, fatty dish, or as an appetizer. All recipes are very easy and some steps are even pictured in full color in case you are not sure about the procedure. There are also a few recipes that use pickles as ingredients.

Before I became entranced by Japanese cuisine I had no idea how much pickles were a part of the experience. Since I've begun my education into Japanese food, I have been stunned by the sheer variety of tsukemono.

I made one of the quick cabbage pickles, which took about twenty minutes to have the best crisp, salty pickled cabbage I have ever eaten. I stood in the kitchen and ate it all! It was so delicious that I set about to make as many pickles as I could from the book.

All of them have been successful and tasty. I have impressed friends and family with my tsukemono - we eat them with everything - not just Japanese food. They make great accompaniment to picnic food and are perfect for bento box lunches.

This full color book is exquisite with photos for every recipe and photos on preparation too. I am so happy this was my first book on tsukemono, I am addicted!

The recipes are easy to follow. Some of the recipes have photos picturing specific steps of the recipes and all have the finished product photo. This book will also recommend different recipes & their page numbers for the originally called for main vegetable, which gives you a large variety of tsukemono recipes. There are also some suggestions on using the finished products in main dish recipes.

I purchased this book because I was looking for quick tsukemono to add into bento lunches and as accompaniments to meals. I did not find traditional japanese tsukemono in this book, and I was very disappointed. The author combines french cuisine with japanese pickling techniques.

I made several of the recipes in this book and none of them were to my liking, usually too bland or too singularly flavored (too much sweet or too much salty, not enough mixing of flavors).

The pictures in the book are excellent and the author does a thorough job of explaining pickling with rice bran. If you're looking for more of a western-eastern fusion type of thing, this book would serve you well. If you're looking for "traditional" tsukemono, go elsewhere.

(corrected per comment below - thanks!)

This book is OK but I wasn't blown away. There are a decent amount of recipes that are pretty similar. I was hoping for more diversity and a lot more techniques. I don't think I would buy this book if I had seen it first.

This book was very interesting, I tried some of the recipes in the book with food I have accessible to me and sub others. I must say it turned pretty easy and tasted great. I'd recommend it to anyone that's not afraid of experimenting and dares to try new things.

The recipes are clearly written and easy to follow and produce good to excellent results--the few I have tried. The supplemental recipes on how to use the pickles are welcome and interesting.

Overall an excellent book. But only if you have a source for the materials at hand. Although exotic gear, techniques, and long times are not required.

Lots of fun and quick recipes. Great reason to explore all of the unique grocers in Southeast Michigan to find all of the ingredients. I really love the ginger-honey-lemon recipe to make my own ginger ale.

If you love pickles but worry about the perservatives harming your health from the pickles, this book is right for you. It is very simple and fast to get crispy, yummy vegetables. Not your familiar salad dressing, however, if you are close to any Asian grocery store or just order on line for things like kombu and bonito, you will get it done easily by following the photos step by step.

Really happy with this book. I enjoy Japanese pickles but not a fan of MSG or weird chemical additives in store bought pickles. So finally I decided to try out recipes. Hubby and I both love the red onions with honey apple, citron infused daikon (I've made it with lemons and limes when I ran out of yuzu), sweet vinegar lotus root, garlic miso radishes, kombu zuke cucumbers, labaicai, kimchee style bean sprouts, marinated squid, cucumber and zhacai, carrots with dried shrimp. I was so impressed with the results that I started a nukazuke pot. I used an 8 qt. enamel on steel stockpot as my container, bought 4 bags of premade nuka-doko powders, and a bottle of beer, plus the remaining amount as water. (You need to add water to the premade mix; I just used a bottle of beer as a portion instead of water). Once mixed well, you can start pickling vegetables right away! Although the first few batches can be very salty, I just take them out after 4 or 6 hours. Now they can pickle overnight and next day I have pickles with my meals. I pickle only enough to eat at 1 time. Remember to add more toasted nuka and salt (or premade nukadoko) as time goes by.