If National Geographic and PuffHo can do it, so can I! Anyway, I found this interesting, as I’ve never had the real thing. Click to find the answer:
It’s wasabi (Eutrema japonica)! According to the BBC, two years ago it went for £98 ($160 US) per kilo. Apparently it’s hard as hell to grow, and the green stuff you get in sushi restaurants is almost always horseradish mixed with green food coloring. Here’s the real deal:
An article in Steamy Kitchen details the growing, harvesting, and then use of the plant (you eat the grated rhizome). Most American commercial growing is done in the Pacific Northwest.
In a minute, Aleena amasses a little pile of grated wasabi, a lovely, light shade of green. (It really is green; the color comes from chlorophyll, since despite its root-like appearance, the rhizome grows above ground.) She pushes the shavings into a neat little pile, and then we let them rest for one to two minutes. This allows the wasabi’s flavor to develop; the flavor-producing compounds react following grating and exposure to the air. They’re extremely volatile, though – meaning that fresh wasabi loses its pungency and hot flavor in about 20 minutes. It must be eaten freshly grated!
You can order the fresh rhizomes online (e.g. here, here, and here), and if you shop judiciously you can get it for only $100 per pound.
One article says that only 5% of sushi restaurants (at least in the U.S.) use the real thing instead of horseradish, and since I’ve never seen it grated in front of me, I suspect I’ve never had real wasabi. It’s supposed to be a lot better than the substitute; if you’ve had the real thing, weigh in below.
Have had the real thing. The fake stuff is a slow burn. Real wasabi is a firecracker going off in your mouth.
Exactly! The first time I encountered real wasabi in Japan, it felt like a cannon went off in the back of my head.
That occurred around 1980, and a few times afterwards. I don’t think that the wasabi that I had in Japan was the real thing since maybe 2000.
“…A cannon going off in my head.”
Is that really a GOOD thing?
If you’re a fan of chilli and other burns, then this is definitely a yes!
“A little dab’ll do ya!”
Oh, so that’s a wasabi. It thought that was a kind of rabiate muslim.
But if wasabi is anything near radish I’ll decline all the same. Yuck.
“If National Geographic and PuffHo can do it, so can I!”
And I don’t follow either of them. Coincidence? :p
Researched growing it, if anyone wants to lend me €100000 we can be millionaires in ten to twenty years of back breaking work!
It’s grown in England by a company that grows water cress and on the west coast of America, actually near portland, you could’ve gotten the real deal there.
I have 200 acres under cultivation in the Pacific Northwest with two cold, spring-fed creeks. If you scrape together the money we can work something out.
Just grow saffron instead.
‘Tis very labour-intensive, hence the price! I hope to grow more for my own use in the kitchen.
http://www.saffronbulbs.com/culture.htm
Or pot.
Yes, real wasabi is different, and very expensive. But one of the big Japanese markets here (Bay Area) often has it, and you don’t need a lot.
For a British food writer’s brief description, see Chapter 12: “The Campaign for Real Wasabi” in Michael Booth’s book “Sushi and Beyond”.
In Japan, it’s mostly grown outdoors, though usually under shade covering, in ponds formed in streams, so with constantly flowing cool water. The biggest farm is in Azumino (Nagano Prefecture), the Daio Wasabi Farm (http://www.azumino-e-tabi.net/en/contents03+index.id+2.htm), which is a tourist attraction as well as a wasabi farm; but the major production area is the Amagi Mountains on the Izu Peninsula.
But it does grow in soil; and that seems to be how the folks in your photos are doing it.
I had freshly grated something at a high end sushi restaurant, but can’t be sure if it was the real thing. Good though.
As an interesting side note, wasabi is rumored to have preservative effects in Japan. Before knowing this I was baffled by a Japanese cartoon depicting zombies surviving by eating the fresh rhizomes.
Reading about the stuff, I think wasabi attempts to preserve itself like fugu, namely by not being eaten.
But then the gods created Japan.
There is a premium sushi restaurant in Portland Maine (Miyake – the chef is a James Beard award finalist and has appeared on Bizarre Foods), where I was served wasabi with a more fibrous texture and a more complex flavor than I was used to.
I found it not quite as hot but far more interesting and tasty.
I did not ask the server, but assumed that it was fresh-grated wasabi.
Next time I go there, I’ll have to ask.
The leaves on these things look like giant versions of the accursed invasive Garlic Mustard. I’ve just finished my spring assault on the stuff at my place and a woodlot I own (I’m winning, but can’t let up), but now I guess I’ll have to go down in the hollow and find a big second-year plant (still tiny vs. the wasabi pictured) to see if the root collar may have similar flavors.
They’re both Brassicas, and the pungent constituents in all Brassicas are glucosinilates, which decompose or are metabolized to isothiocyanates when released (in this case, the grating part), from whence the pungency comes. Per Wikipedia, there are apparently well over 100 different glucosinylates produced by the collective Brassicaceae (formerly Cruciferae) Family, with a handful in any individual species. Here’s a page that combines the chemical aspects with the health-related aspects.
Also (just found!) – an evolutionary note – the invasiveness of garlic mustard is aided by the myco-toxic activity of glucosinilates. Studies on different populations indicate that older populations of garlic mustard (having conquered the competing flora dependent on soil fungi) produce lower levels of glucosinilates.
Sidebar: for someone who spent most of his career in chemical protein sequencing, it’s of some interest that isothiocyanates turn up here, since phenylisothiocyanate, the Edman reagent, still remains the compound of choice for that technique after 60+yrs.
Thanks! Very interesting. In Europe, where Alliaria petiolata is native, I have never seen it dominate. Presumably its other competitors are equally as pushy…
It is edible.
Glad you liked. And yep, the foodies here are in love with the stuff. I just see it as detrimental to my efforts to grow backcross American Chestnuts on my woodlot.
Update: experiment performed. Nothing in garlic mustard root or root collar remotely resembles wasabi/horseradish.
Where can I get seeds???!
About 6 years ago, I bought some from a farm in, if I recall, the Carolinas (South?), about $70 for a pound of about 6 rhizomes. ‘Twas cool (no pun intended)! But at that price, it won’t be a staple on my table…
I visited a friend in Honolulu a few years back (he was born in Hawaii and is of Japanese descent). For dinner one night we went to a large Japanese market and bought all the ingredients for a “sushi night” at his house, including a small piece of wasabi. We grated the wasabi and it was great; it was so obviously not what I’ve had at most (maybe all) sushi restaurants.
I’ve read about how (actual) wasabi is very difficult to transport. I’m sure I’ve never had it, even in Vancouver.
I wonder about our truth-in-advertising laws, though …