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Fish and seafood from Japan

Echizen shio-uni越前塩うに

Echizen shio-uni is the salted, dried and ripened roe of the small bafun sea urchin from the Fukui coast. The gonads are picked out by hand, salted on mats or boards until sticky, kneaded to a paste and ripened, some for one to three years. It takes about 100 urchins to make 100 g.

Fully documentedFish and seafood12 months – 3 years

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceMAFF gives no salt amount; makers vary the ripening time.
Bafun sea urchins, 2–3 cm acrossAbout 100 urchins per 100 g of product[maff-shiouni]
Salt, spread under and sprinkled over the roeNot given[maff-shiouni]

Total time across the recorded steps: 12 months – 3 years

Start
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What changes: Starting material: small bafun urchins fished by ama divers in summer

Step 1 of 5
Harvest bafun urchins
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Local ama divers fish the urchins; the catch is processed and salted straight away. Output: fresh bafun urchins, processed on the spot.

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

Echizen shio-uni is the salted, dried and ripened roe of the small bafun sea urchin from the Fukui coast. The gonads are picked out by hand, salted on mats or boards until sticky, kneaded to a paste and ripened, some for one to three years. It takes about 100 urchins to make 100 g. Made in 5 steps over 12 months – 3 years. The longest step, ripen, takes 12 months – 3 years (MAFF Japan).

Key numbers
Main step12 months – 3 yearsReported[maff-shiouni]Ripen

What makes this one different

Shio-uni is not a wet shiokara; the salted roe is dried until sticky, then kneaded and ripened, sometimes for years. Long ripening shifts the colour from orange towards vermilion.

Catch
Fukui lands only about 100 kg of bafun urchin a year (MAFF).

Related ferments

Safety

For salted sea-urchin shiokara in general, a 1955 Kyushu University study says it spoils more easily than bonito shiokara and often ferments abnormally. Its introduction recalls earlier advice to store sea-urchin shiokara at 22 °C or below and under 50 % water, and notes that by 1955 alcohol was added as a preservative for long keeping (Tomiyasu et al. 1955).

History and sources

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

Nara-period wooden tablets found at Heijō-kyō list sea urchin as tribute from Mikata in Wakasa, so salted urchin likely dates back at least that far. The present method dates from the late Edo period, when the third head of Tennōya, a purveyor to the Fukui domain, devised it as a keeping food. The Nihon sankai meisan zue called it the finest of shiokara.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Temperature, salt and pH
The sources we found give no temperature, salt or pH figure for any of its steps.
  1. [maff-shiouni] MAFF Japan, Nippon dentōshoku zukan (Japan traditional food encyclopedia), Echizen shio-uni (Fukui)gov
  2. [tomiyasu1955] Tomiyasu Y., Toyomizu M., Takahashi K. 1955, On the existence of an antibiotic substance in katsuo- and uni-shiokara, Journal of the Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University 15(1):47-52paper
  3. [maff-hokuriku74] MAFF Hokuriku Regional Agricultural Administration Office, Fukui food culture newsletter (wasyoku 74), entry on Echizen shio-uni, quoting the MAFF encyclopediagov