Nukazuke

Nukazuke

What it is

Rice bran only became abundant in the seventeenth century, when milling started stripping brown rice white — and beriberi, the thiamine deficiency, grew so common in the capital that it was called the Edo disease. The bran bed put the vitamin back: a cucumber left twelve hours in a nukadoko comes out with roughly ten times the thiamine it went in with.

In the kitchen

The bed is alive and wants turning by hand once a day, right down to the bottom, or it goes anaerobic and smells of solvent. Hold it around 12 percent salt by weight of bran, and when it turns watery bury a folded cloth or a handful of dried shiitake to draw the liquid out.

Goes with

Cucumber Daikon Carrot Eggplant Rice Kombu Salt

Same species

Akazu Arborio rice Rice paper (bánh tráng) Basmati rice Black glutinous rice Black rice

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