Homemade Japanese Pepper

山椒

Sansho

I saw a big box of sansho in the grocery store and I decided I was in the mood to prepare a year’s worth of it.

---

Sansho is Japanese pepper and is one of my favourite ingredients. It looks like little green peppercorns but it’s soft and has a nice bitter kick to it. It goes with everything. My top Sansho specialties are sansho potato salad, sansho peperoncino, and sansho with white fish. Sansho can only be harvested May through July so if you hoard them now, you can prepare them and store them so you can use it throughout the year.

Ingredients:

Sansho no mi (the raw peppercorn), salt, soy sauce, olive oil, vinegar, and sake.

And depending on how much you want to prepare, set aside lots of time. Do this on a day where you don’t have anything else to do and can just enjoy the process, because it’s a bit of a test of patience.

This is what you do.

1. They come in bunches so start by rinsing off any dirt or grime that might be left and then pick the peppercorns off. It’s okay to leave the little stems on the sansho. They’ll look like tiny little green cherries. I did 500 grams and it took maybe two hours with breaks~

2. Next, put them in boiling water with a couple pinches of salt for 6-7 minutes or until you can squish one in between your fingers.

3. Drain, rinse, and pat em all dry with some paper towels.

Now for the flavour variations.

SALT

Fill half your jar with boiled sansho, add a generous couple pinches of salt then fill the rest with more boiled sansho. Next, close and shake your jar until the salt is evenly spread around inside and you’re done!

ready in : 10 days, lasts: 1 year, use: potato salad.

SOY SAUCE

Fill your jar with boiled sansho and then fill it with soy sauce.

ready in : 10 days, lasts: 1 year, use: white fish.

OLIVE OIL

Fill your jar with boiled sansho and then fill it with olive oil. Done.

ready in : 2-3 days, lasts: 6 months , use: peperoncino

VINEGAR

Okay this one takes a tiny bit more work but still, super easy. Prepare one-part sansho, one-part vinegar, and one-part water. Heat the vinegar and water in a pan, once it starts to boil put the sansho in. When it starts to boil again, turn off the heat and wait for it to cool then put it in a jar.

ready in : 2-3 days, lasts: 3 months, use: pickled anything(fish, cucumbers, daikon…)

SAKE

Put 5% the amount of your sansho of sake in a blender along with your boiled sansho and blend.

ready in : immediately, lasts: 1 year, use: tofu/salad