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Vegetables from Kamigamo district, Kyoto, Japan

Suguki (sugukizuke)すぐき漬け

Suguki turnips are peeled, salted in wooden barrels, pressed under a long weighted lever, then put in a warm room (muro) at about 40 °C to sour by lactic fermentation. Salt is the only ingredient, and the pickle is ready in about half a month.

Fully documentedVegetables7 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedMade by pickle makers with special warm rooms; no amounts are published in the sources read.
Suguki turnip, root and leavesHarvested from mid-November to January, when frost raises the root's sugar[maff-suguki]
SaltThe only other ingredient[maff-suguki][kikkoman2015]

Total time across the recorded steps: 7 days

Start
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Close-up: salt moving into a leaf

What changes: Peeled suguki turnips are rinsed and salted in a wooden barrel

Step 1 of 4
Peel, rinse and pre-pickle with salt (shitazuke)
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactobacillus brevis
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

Suguki turnips are peeled, salted in wooden barrels, pressed under a long weighted lever, then put in a warm room (muro) at about 40 °C to sour by lactic fermentation. Salt is the only ingredient, and the pickle is ready in about half a month. Made in 4 steps over 7 days. The longest step, warm in the muro, takes 7 days (Kikkoman Food Forum 2015) and runs at 40 °C (MAFF 2026). Lactic acid bacteria; the strain Lactobacillus brevis KB290 was isolated from suguki does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step7 daysReported[kikkoman2015]Warm in the muro
Temperature40 °CReported[maff-suguki]Warm in the muro

What makes this one different

Suguki is pickled with salt alone and ranks with senmaizuke and shibazuke as one of Kyoto's three great pickles [maff-suguki]. The warm muro step speeds up lactic fermentation to about half a month, where the old method at natural temperature finished in spring to summer [maff-suguki].

Related ferments

Variants

  • Jikō-nare (seasonal ripening)The old method without a muro, left to ferment at the natural temperature; ready in spring to summer and eaten as a summer delicacy in the Edo period.

Safety

Japan's health ministry defines a pickle that keeps for 7 days or more at room temperature as one with salt at 4 % or more, or pH 4.0 or lower, or salt at 3 % to under 4 % with pH 4.6 or lower [mhlw2013]. The same notice lists lactic-fermented pickles such as sunki and sauerkraut under "other pickles". This is a general rule for Japanese pickles; the sources read give no pH or salt value for suguki itself.

History and sources

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

Suguki pickling is said to have begun in the early Edo period, made at first only by the shake families of Kamigamo Shrine and presented to the imperial palace. Later Edo-period farmers near the shrine made it, but a ban kept it from leaving the village, and it spread through the city only after the Meiji Restoration.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [maff-suguki] MAFF, うちの郷土料理 (Our Regional Cuisines), すぐき漬け (Kyoto); read 2026-10gov
  2. [kikkoman2015] Kikkoman Food Forum, Tasty Travel vol. 29 no. 2, Suguki, July 2015web
  3. [waki2014] Waki N., Matsumoto M., Fukui Y., Suganuma H. 2014, Effects of probiotic Lactobacillus brevis KB290 on incidence of influenza infection among schoolchildren, Letters in Applied Microbiology 59(6):565–571paper
  4. [iguchi2021] Iguchi H. 2021, Microbial characterization of the Japanese traditional pickle senmaizuke produced by two different manufacturing processes, Food Science & Nutrition 9(8):4452–4460 (names suguki as a lactic-fermented Kyoto pickle)paper
  5. [mhlw2013] Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), Food Safety Department, notice 食安監発1213第2号 of 13 Dec 2013, 漬物の衛生規範の改正等について (revision of the hygiene code for pickles)gov