Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Vegetables from Nihonmatsu, Fukushima

Sangohachi-zuke (3-5-8 koji pickle)三五八漬け

Cooked rice, rice koji and salt are mixed, put in a jar and kept for a month or more. Summer vegetables are rubbed with this sangohachi base and pickled overnight. The name is said to come from a 3:5:8 ratio of salt, koji and rice.

Fully documentedVegetables30 days

Recipe

Sangohachi-zuke (3-5-8 koji pickle), a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: 高橋佑馬, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceServes 4, a recipe by Hiraide Mihoko on MAFF's regional cuisine site. Its 2:1:0.5 cups of rice, koji and salt is not the 3:5:8 of the name; one account holds that the old ratio was really 1:1:1.
Cooked rice2 cupsCooked as usual and cooled to body warmth; cold rice or glutinous rice is also used[maff-sangohachi]
Rice koji1 cup[maff-sangohachi]
Salt1/2 cupModern recipes use less salt than the old ones[maff-sangohachi]
Cucumber, carrot, eggplant, turnip and other vegetablesAs needed[maff-sangohachi]
Starterkoji (rice koji)

Total time across the recorded steps: 30 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
60 °C

What changes: Rice is cooked and left to cool until it is just warm

Step 1 of 4
Cook the rice and cool it to body warmth
Time
Not documented
Temperature
60 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: cooked rice at body warmth.

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

Cooked rice, rice koji and salt are mixed, put in a jar and kept for a month or more. Summer vegetables are rubbed with this sangohachi base and pickled overnight. The name is said to come from a 3:5:8 ratio of salt, koji and rice. Made in 4 steps over 30 days. The longest step, store in a jar to ripen into the sangohachi base, takes at least 30 days (MAFF うちの郷土料理 (Our Regional Cuisines) 2026). Salt is 2 % (Kochi Prefecture agricultural portal (こうち農業ネッ…).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 30 daysReported[maff-sangohachi]Store in a jar to ripen into the sangohachi base
Temperature60 °CReported[kochi-sangohachi]Cook the rice and cool it to body warmth
Salt2 %Reported[kochi-sangohachi]Rub the vegetables with the base and pickle overnight

What makes this one different

The base is made a month or more ahead from rice, koji and salt and kept, and the vegetables only spend a night in it. Shio-koji is said to descend from it; it is made without rice.

Related ferments

Safety

Kochi Prefecture's extension sheet has the base sealed in a crock or enamel container and kept in a cool, dark place, and the used bed topped up with leftover rice, koji and salt [kochi-sangohachi]. MAFF says modern recipes use less salt than the old ones [maff-sangohachi].

History and sources

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

A koji food known since the Edo period (MAFF). Japanese Wikipedia calls it the origin of the shio-koji boom of the Heisei era.

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [maff-sangohachi] MAFF うちの郷土料理 (Our Regional Cuisines), 三五八漬け (Fukushima), recipe by Hiraide Mihoko, read 2026-10gov
  2. [jawiki-sangohachi] Japanese Wikipedia, 三五八漬け (name, regions and links to shio-koji), read 2026-10wiki
  3. [kochi-sangohachi] Kochi Prefecture agricultural portal (こうち農業ネット) 2012, 三五八漬の床 (recipe sheet, methods A and B)gov