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Mixed Citrus ponzu

Champonzu Mixed Citrus Ponzu

Sale price£14.00
Kumano, Japan 300ml

Most ponzu leans on a single citrus; this one blends five, each bringing something different — the perfume of yuzu, the bitter edge of daidai, the sharp lift of sudachi, the rounder notes of yuko and kabosu. The result is layered rather than simply sour: a citrus sauce with the depth of soy and dashi behind it, and a savoury length most ponzu doesn't reach.
Mixed Citrus ponzu
Champonzu Mixed Citrus Ponzu Sale price£14.00

Ponzu is Japan's citrus-and-soy sauce, and champon means to mix — so this is a ponzu built not on one citrus but on five. The juices of yuzu, daidai, yuko, kabosu and sudachi are blended over a base of soy sauce, hon mirin, amazake and a three-way dashi of bonito, kombu and shiitake, then rounded with Japanese plum. Bright and tart, but deep and savoury underneath, with a gentle sweetness and none of the harsh sourness of a sharper ponzu.

Use it wherever you'd want acidity and umami together. It's a dipping sauce for sashimi, sushi, tempura and gyoza, the citrus counterpoint to a shabu-shabu or nabe hot pot, a dressing for salads and cold noodles, and a finishing splash over grilled fish, chicken or vegetables — especially good stirred with grated daikon. Refrigerate once opened.

Producer Marusho has made rice vinegar since 1879, in the Kumano region of the Kii Peninsula in southern Japan — a UNESCO World Heritage landscape of sacred, cedar-clad mountains and rivers, close to Nachi Falls, the country's tallest single-drop waterfall. The house still works the old way, with natural water and rice fermented slowly in wooden vats.

Ingredients Citrus juices (yuzu, daidai, yuko, kabosu, sudachi), Japanese plum, soy sauce (soybeans, wheat), hon mirin, amazake, dashi (bonito (FISH), kombu, shiitake).