Ponzu sauce: description, recipe, ingredients, photo

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Each national cuisine is distinguished by its traditions and secrets. And the dishes themselves, belonging to a particular country, are unique in taste and aroma. Such individuality is given to them by seasonings, sauces and spices, popular in the homeland of these culinary masterpieces. Any nation has such products and dishes - a kind of visiting card of the whole country.

In Japan, it's ponzu sauce. It is served with fish, seafood and meat, used as a base for various soups. The Japanese themselves simply dip bread in it and eat it with pleasure.

What is this amazing seasoning made of? And how to make a ponzu at home for an ordinary Russian person?

What is ponzu sauce made of?

The composition of the sauce is rather complicated. Traditional Japanese products are used for it:

• Kombu algae (kind of kelp).
• Sweet Japanese mirin wine is a very popular addition to the national cuisine of this country.
• Rice vinegar.
• Dried fish katsuobushi or dashi.
• Yuzu citrus juice.

BSome recipes use sudachi fruit (a type of mandarin) or cabosu (a hybrid of papeda and bitter orange). All of them have a sour taste, so they are often replaced with ordinary lemon.

Yuzu tastes like a cross between lime, orange and tangerine. At the same time, it has an unusual aroma that makes it unlike other citrus fruits. And if the sour taste is easy to repeat through the use of these analogues, then the flavor of yuzu cannot be replaced.

Having all the listed products in stock, making the sauce is easy:

• Wine, fish and seaweed are mixed and brought to a boil.
• Then cool, remove seaweed and add yuzu.
• To soften the acid, you can put sugar and seasoning is ready.

If you add lightly s alted soy sauce to this composition, you get a completely different product - ponzu shoyu. It is also very popular in Japan.

How to make ponzu sauce at home?

Recipe 1. Mirin wine and seaweed

There are many variations of this Japanese sauce.

Here is one of them:

• Boil half a glass of mirin wine.
• Pour in half a cup of soy sauce.
• Add 60mg of citrus vinegar or regular lemon/lime juice.
• Send dry washed seaweed there (about 5 cm).
• The sauce should be chilled and refrigerated.

Recipe 2. Three citruses

An even easier sauce recipeponzu.

1. Take 3 citrus fruits: orange, lime and lemon. Cut them in half and squeeze out the juice. Soak lime and lemon zest in water to remove bitterness.
2. Put the juice on a small fire and boil a little until it thickens slightly.
3. Crush one clove of garlic, grate a centimeter piece of ginger on a fine grater. Squeeze the juice out of them.
4. Chili pepper divided into three parts, one of which must be crushed to a pulp.
5. Pour 80mg of soy sauce and the ginger-garlic juice prepared earlier into a cup.
6. Add pepper pulp and thickened citrus juice.
7. Stir the composition and pass through a sieve or gauze.
8. Now put in the prepared citrus peel. After a while, it must be removed.
9. Garnish the sauce with finely chopped cilantro before serving.

Recipe 3. Wine, citrus and dried tuna

• Sake or mirin (100 g) simmer over low heat for one minute until the alcohol has completely evaporated.
• Add 80 g of soy sauce and 15 g of rice vinegar to the resulting substance.

• Squeeze lemon and orange juice.
• Mix everything and add 20 g of dried tuna, chopped into shavings.
• The sauce should brew for a couple of hours, after which it should be filtered.

Recipe 4. Good combination

1. Citrus and soy sauce, mirin, lemon juice and yuzu juice - the listed products in the amount of 100 g (each component) put in one jar.
2. Add lemon zest20g dried minced tuna and dried kombu seaweed.
3. Put the lid on the jar and leave for three to four days.

Recipe 5. Dashi broth

In this version dashi broth is added. Here's how to cook it:

• take 40 g of anchovies or pre-soaked dried tuna and a piece of dry seaweed;
• put food in a saucepan, pour a liter of water. Put on the fire, wait until it boils and immediately remove the algae;
• simmer the broth for another 5-7 minutes.

You can also buy ready-made dasha powder in the store. It is bred and used instead of broth.

So, dashi sauce recipe:

1. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon.
2. Add two tbsp to it. spoons of rice vinegar.
3. Then pour in 5 tablespoons of soy sauce.
4. In 1/2 cup of warm boiled water, dilute 50 g of dasha powder and add to the main composition.
5. The finished sauce should be allowed to brew.

Citrus or rice vinegar

Ponzu is traditionally made with citrus or rice vinegar. These ingredients can be purchased at a specialized store. And in the absence of such an opportunity, it is easy to make an identical supplement at home.

To make a fragrant additive, you need apple or grape vinegar:

• Apple cider vinegar. Combine one tablespoon of vinegar and boiled water. Throw a teaspoon of sugar and a little s alt into the resulting mixture. Bring to a boil and immediatelyturn it off.
• Grape vinegar. Take 3 teaspoons of sugar and a pinch of s alt. Add 4 tablespoons of vinegar. Heat until sugar dissolves. Also, do not boil.

Another Citrus Vinegar Ponzu Recipe:

1. Take the peel of a lemon and an orange (fresh or dried). Pour a liter of vinegar (9%) and infuse for a week.
2. Strain and pour into containers.
3. Store the finished mixture in a cool, dark place.

This fragrant vinegar is used not only for sauces, but also in barbecue marinades and salad dressings. It is also often added to meat and fish.

You can buy ready-made ponzu sauce in a speci alty store, a large supermarket or via the Internet. But in terms of taste, it will significantly lose to the home version. The taste of the purchased analogue is sharp and watery. After all, this is, at its core, ordinary soy sauce mixed with lemon juice.

Ponzu sauce made at home has a fundamental taste difference. It is sour, s alty, sweet and bitter at the same time. And its aroma is so unusual that it is difficult to describe in words. This is an indescribable bouquet of smells of wine, fruits and flowers.

Spice has an interesting feature of "adapting" to the taste characteristics of the products with which it interacts. Moreover, each ingredient, be it fish or meat, reveals only one side of its taste. Ponzu sauce goes well with so many dishes, turning eachof them into a real masterpiece of culinary art.

Isn't it worth it to run around the shops in search of the right products in order to personally evaluate this amazing invention of Japanese cuisine?