【Reading】すづけ

【English Name】Vinegar Pickling

Su-zuke (vinegar pickling) is a cooking technique of soaking ingredients in vinegar to enhance their keeping quality. Salt, sugar, and spices are also often used together.

In the world of sushi, it is one of the indispensable techniques, and it is widely used for condiments served with sushi, such as gari (sweet vinegared ginger) and beni-shoga (red pickled ginger). Also, the method of curing fish with vinegar, as in shime-saba, is a kind of vinegar pickling, serving both freshness preservation and flavoring.

Local dishes of vinegar pickling exist throughout Japan. Okayama Prefecture's "mamakari" is a dish of sappa, a small fish of the herring family, pickled in vinegar; the origin of the name is said to be that it is so delicious one would borrow rice (meshi) from the neighbor's house. Its first literary appearance is a record from Bunka 14 (1817), in which a method is passed down of removing the scales and innards of the sappa, salting it, and pickling it in vinegar together with ginger and kombu.

Similar food cultures exist widely overseas as well. Western pickles are vegetables pickled in spiced vinegar, and in Northern Europe vinegar-pickled herring is enjoyed as a standard dish at the Midsummer festival. Preservation by vinegar is wisdom common to the world, and its benefit is great in sushi culture as well.