Yuzu – taste and health benefits that go well beyond Japan’s borders

The high price is due mainly to the great distances it must travel to get to us and the complicated transport. As yuzu only keeps for about three weeks and doesn’t ripen further after it’s harvested, the transport needs to go quickly. Having this shipping infrastructure at the press of a button, however, is very costly as the main growing areas lie in faraway lands such as Japan, China and Korea. Thus the fruit is rarely easy to get a hold of fresh. If – despite all of this – you’d like to treat yourself to a fresh yuzu, your Liebherr refrigerator will keep it aromatic and full of vitamins quite a bit longer. Thanks to BioFresh fresh technology, your Liebherr provides a perfect climate for fruit and veg. In gourmet shops or online, you can also find such things as yuzu juice or yuzu purée as well as yuzu tea that keep longer.

Yuzu is a cross between a mandarin and an ichang lemon. It’s the lemon side of the family that allows the fruit to survive even in frostier climes. This cross breeding yields a fruit that looks like a small orange. But the taste of a yuzu is much more complex and intense. The fullness of its aroma is much greater than its tennis ball size might lead you to believe. The delightfully tart and slightly bitter notes, similar to a grapefruit, are complemented by a pleasantly sweet after taste. Because the flavour is so intense, a little yuzu goes a long way. Generally, just a few drops are sufficient to aromatise an entire meal.

Beside the traditional yuzu bath, yuzu tea is gaining popularity in Japan. However, it’s not the dried yuzu peel that forms the basis of this tea, but rather a gel-like mass, mixed with sugar syrup or honey. To prepare yuzu tea, hot water is poured over one to two teaspoons of this jelly. The vitamin C contained in the fruit – roughly three times as much as in a lemon – is thought to ward off even the most virulent cold virus.

Something which is also quite popular in Japan is yuzukosho, a spice paste containing yuzu to which salt and chilli pepper have been added. Green chillies produce a green spice paste and red chillies an orange paste. There’s also yuzu ponzu, which is a soy sauce aromatised with yuzu, adding further complexity to the richness of Asian cuisine.

In general, yuzu can be added as a paste, sauce, juice, purée or simply fresh as a fruit to a wide variety of recipes. The fruit is perfect for both sweet and savoury dishes. Whether it’s a curry, wok dish or stir fry you’re after – just a few drops of the fruit can bring a whole new aroma spectrum to your dishes. But even mild cream dishes or tarts can be flavoured with yuzu. If you fancy something cooler, consider a yuzu cocktail with, for example, 30 ml of yuzu purée and 40 ml of gin mixed with 120 ml of tonic water. For the teetotallers among you, add a little yuzu juice to ginger beer and elderberry syrup. Cheers!