Ponzu
Ponzu is soy sauce with its weight taken out and acidity put in. It is made without heat: the ingredients simply sit together for a day. One thing is critical — nothing here is cooked. Simmering kombu draws out its slime and bitterness, and boiled citrus juice loses the freshness that is the whole reason for adding it. A cold infusion draws out the umami (glutamate and inosinate) without the bitterness.
Your own work in that: 0 min.
- Combining 15 min
- Cold infusion 1440 min
- Straining 5 min
Step by step
0 / 5 doneDo not wash the kombu, wipe it
The white bloom on kombu is natural glutamate — all the umami the kelp has. Do not rinse it off. Wipe the strip with a dry cloth to remove dust, and no more.
Ingredients: 10 g kombu · 10 g bonito flakes
The white bloom is umami — do not wash it off.Squeeze the citrus by hand
Squeeze the lemon, lime and orange by hand, without pressing hard on the skins. Hard pressure on the skin releases bitter oils, and ponzu should be sharp and clean with no bitterness underneath. Strain out the pips.
Ingredients: 2 pcs lemons · 2 pcs limes · ½ pcs orange
Combine everything cold
Pour the soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar and citrus juices into a jar, add the kombu and scatter the bonito flakes on top. Do not stir and do not heat anything — this entire sauce is made without a flame.
Ingredients: 200 ml soy sauce · 60 ml mirin · 30 ml rice vinegar
Bonito flakes on top, no stirring.Leave a day in the fridge
Seal the jar and refrigerate for 24 hours. The kombu gives up glutamate and the bonito inosinate — two compounds whose umami together is far greater than the sum of each alone. The same principle that makes dashi work.
Ingredients: 10 g kombu · 10 g bonito flakes
Strain without pressing
Strain through a cloth-lined sieve, without squeezing the flakes. Pressed bonito releases compounds that read in the finished sauce as fishy and faintly bitter. Bottle it.
Ingredients: 10 g kombu · 10 g bonito flakes
Strained, never pressed.
Before you start
Yuzu, if you can find it
In Japan ponzu is most often made with yuzu, sudachi or kabosu. Yuzu is a citrus that smells somewhere between mandarin and grapefruit. Outside Japan it is sold as bottled juice in Asian shops. A mix of lemon, lime and a little orange is a very good approximation.
A month in the fridge
The salt in the soy sauce and the citrus acid preserve the sauce, so strained ponzu keeps a month in the fridge. After two weeks the fresh citrus aroma fades — add a spoonful of fresh juice and it comes back.
What to use it on
Sashimi, gyoza, beef tataki, as a salad dressing, with grilled fish, or for dipping blanched vegetables. Diluted 1:1 with water it becomes a light dipping sauce for soba noodles.