Easy Yuzucha--just 2 ingredients!
4 yuzu fruits
250-500 grams sugar (rock sugar is recommended; should be about equal weight to yuzus, but can be reduced depending on taste)
Yuzu is a citrus fruit found in East Asia. One of its many uses is in yuzucha, which resembles marmalade and is most often mixed with hot water to make yuzu "tea," which of course is not a tea at all but is delicious and warming anyway!
To make a big jar of the stuff:
Wash yuzus, cut into quarters, remove seeds, peel. Tear remaining innards into small-ish pieces and put into a glass container big enough to hold all the ingredients. Thinly slice peels and add to container. Add sugar, mix well, and cover.
The yuzucha is "done" when the sugar is dissolved. Since I used coarse beet sugar, this took only a couple of hours (with occasional mixing). If you use rock sugar, it will take longer. In either case, this probably tastes best after a week.
Keeps about 3 months in the fridge.
For a warm, energizing winter drink, mix a spoonful into hot water. Other uses are also possible.
SO HOW'D IT GO?
Found the answer to some of my questions and thought id post it for others. 1) Yes this can be made with other herbs/fruits/teas i like to do ginger with lemon zest. 2) To make it easier to store and measure it can be thickened with agar about 1 Teaspoon per Cup of liquid, citrus will require more but this can be lessened by cooking the citrus tea mixture before adding agar. I havent dont any citrus heavy blends yet so it may require some experimentation :)
A few quick questions :). 1. Is a yuzu similar to a citron? 2. Can you make this with other citrus fruits like lemon? 3. Does this turn out thick or watery? If watery how can i thicken it?
For those who haven't seen or heard of Yuzu before you can "smell" them in a body lotion I tried at a Whole Foods about 4 days ago. I don't remember the name, but if you're in a Whole Foods you probably don't mind strolling around looking at new things. So just head over to the personal care section and ask for the lotion(s) with Yuzu in them...
The lotion made my hands soft and smooth and the fragrance wasn't so over powering that everyone else in the aisle had to be overwhelmingly made aware of my presence.
very interesting...what are yuzu fruits? and where do they come from? i'm a california girl and I've never even heard of these.
They're yummy citrus fruits that grow in East Asia. I figured a lot of people might not be familiar with them, so I mentioned that info in the first line of the recipe... :)
Maybe you can find them at your local Asian grocery store. Good luck!