A Guide to Making Umeboshi

Gather the ingredients. Place the ume in a pail and fill it with cold water. Soak overnight in a cool spot, then dump the water and transfer the ume to a large wooden, ceramic, or food-grade plastic tub. Measure the salt over the ume. Distribute the salt with your hand, making sure not to make cuts on the fruit with your fingernails. Place a clean muslin (or food-grade plastic) sheet across the surface of the salted ume and drape it down the sides of the tub. Lay a drop lid on top of the sheet and weight with rocks or similar heavy items equaling the weight of the ume. (Alternatively, you could line the tub with a thick food-grade plastic bag, squeezing out the air, and cinch it up before laying the drop lid.) Store these salt-weighted ume in a cool dark spot, but check after 2 or 3 days to make sure the brine has surfaced. If it has not, you should massage any residual bottom salt up to the top fruit. The ume should remain in the brine for several weeks until the weather turns sunny but check periodically to make sure no mold is forming (if it has, pick the mold off carefully). After brining for at least 3 weeks (2 weeks for small ume), dry the ume for 3 days in the bright sunlight (they do not have to be consecutive days) on rattan mats (or the equivalent) stretched across a wooden frame for good air circulation. At night return the ume to the pickling pot. On the last day of drying, strain the brine left over in the bottom of the salting-tub through a fine-mesh strainer and store in a clean jar or bottle. This is called plum “vinegar” (umesu). I refrigerate my umesu; Tadaaki does not. Pack the dried ume (umeboshi) in resealable gallon-sized freezer bags (fill the bags only half full). A syrupy liquid will pool at the bottom of the bags that aids in the long-term preservation of umeboshi. Umeboshi keep indefinitely at room temperature packed in airtight resealable bags.