Four Recipes with Fresh Asakura Sansho Peppercorns

Salut! It's Yoko, the food blogger.

I was recently given a huge amount of Asakura sansho, so I tried it in all sorts of dishes!

What is Asakura sansho?

For anyone wondering what on earth Asakura sansho is, here's an explanation.

Asakura sansho, now being branded as "Asakura sansho" (Asakura Japanese pepper), is a fragrant sansho said to originate in Yabu City, Hyogo Prefecture (Asakura, Yoka-cho), and a local specialty with a 400-year history.

In the Azuchi-Momoyama period there is a record that Toyotomi Hideyoshi enjoyed drinking hot water with scorched sansho in it, calling it "elegant", and in 1611 it is also recorded that Mamiya Naomoto, the magistrate who managed the Ikuno silver mine, presented it to Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Asakura sansho was prized as a gift that the feudal lords of the day offered up, so it was a luxury ingredient that ordinary people could rarely eat.

The name is said to have spread through the botanist Tomitaro Makino's "Journal of Plant Research" in 1928 (Showa 3).

In it, he noted that ordinary sansho has thorns on its branches, which makes it hard to grow, and is very pungent, while the sansho of Asakura, Yoka-cho, Yabu City has no thorns and a mild pungency, and he reportedly defined sansho without thorns and with little pungency as "Asakura sansho".

Asakura sansho recipes

Asakura sansho is not only mild in pungency, it also has a higher proportion of limonene (a fresh citrus scent) and phellandrene (a minty scent) than other sansho, so it has a wonderfully fresh fragrance. I highly recommend it!

So here are a few recipes using fresh Asakura sansho berries!

Sansho berry oil

Just put oil and drained sansho berries in a jar that you've disinfected with boiling water and dried well, at a ratio of about 3:1! Leave it at room temperature, and in a week it's ready.

The ingredients are simple, so be particular about the oil and choose one with no aroma of its own. I recommend taihaku sesame oil (light, untoasted sesame oil). Canola oil or grapeseed oil would work well too.

How to use sansho berry oil

Drizzle it over grilled fish, meat or any slightly rich dish, and its fresh aroma sharpens the flavor.

I drizzled it on chanchan-yaki (salmon grilled with vegetables and miso) and it was so good!

Pasta with sansho berries and new garlic

Sansho berries and pasta go together unbelievably well...

This is peperoncino with shirasu (baby sardines), new garlic and sansho berries.

Pasta with sansho again today.

Peperoncino with shirasu, fava beans
and new garlic!

The amount of sansho that feels like a bit too much
turns out to be just right.

The freshness of the sansho and the heat of the red chili make it easy to eat even without an appetite.#homecooking #lunch #TwitterHomeCookingClub #lunch pic.twitter.com/XS2JaBBKWD

— Yoko (@foodie_yoko) June 14, 2020

I added fava beans too. Fry the ingredients that take longest to cook first, add a ladleful of the pasta cooking water to emulsify, and if the saltiness is right, toss with the pasta and you're done.

And this is pasta with oil-packed sardines, new garlic and sansho berries.

Pasta with oil-packed sardines and new garlic.

I added some leftover enoki mushrooms too, but they had no presence, lol. It's fine without them!

Fry canned oil sardines and thinly sliced new garlic,
sprinkle with pepper and sansho berries.
Toss with the pasta and squeeze over some lime.

So easy, yet restaurant-level delicious...#homecooking #lunch #lunch pic.twitter.com/Uge5D85kSf

— Yoko (@foodie_yoko) June 12, 2020

A squeeze of lemon or lime makes it refreshing and delicious.

Takikomi gohan (mixed rice) with sansho berries

When it comes to sansho berries, you can't skip takikomi gohan!

This is the conger eel and lotus root takikomi gohan from Buranko, and it's incredibly good.

It goes with rice as well as pasta. And of course with fish: fatty fish like salmon belly pairs outstandingly with sansho berries.

Sansho berry gin

If you like a drink, sansho berry gin is great too!

Just put gin and sansho berries in a well-washed bottle at a ratio of about 2:1 and leave for about a week.

You get a gin with a faint sansho aroma.

Mixed with sparkling water, it's refreshing and cool, like a Japanese-style mojito!

If you dilute it too much the aroma weakens, so increase the share of sansho berries to taste.

Oh, and since it goes down so easily, be careful not to overdo it!

So that was a roundup of recipes using Asakura sansho!

If you have so many sansho berries that you don't know what to do with them, this post covers how to prep and store them: