Live versus processed uni (urchin)

[Fat Guy]

A discussion of the sushi restaurant Ushi Wakamaru in New York City went on a tangent about the issue of live versus processed uni (urchin). My contention, which I didn't even think was a contention, was that live is better. A surprising (to me) number of people, however, offered arguments that processed uni is just as good, and has the benefit of being more consistent. So I think the subject deserves its own topic.

I have some experience with live uni. A couple of years ago, a chef friend from Vancouver, David Hawksworth, came to New York and I helped him dispatch 240 live urchins for a dish he was serving at an event at the Rainbow Room. We snacked on a lot of uni that day.

I also got to mess around with live uni, though not as extensively, during some cooking classes I took in Burgundy with Jean-Michel Lorain. And I've eaten a fair amount live uni, particularly at Nobu where they often have it on the raw bar. Certainly, in talking to David Hawksworth, Jean-Michel Lorain and (Nobu chef) Shin Tsujimura, you wouldn't think there was any question that live uni is superior. And in my experience, every example of live uni I've had has been superior to any example of processed uni. Processed uni (as in the uni most sushi places use, which comes in those little wooden trays), no matter its quality, to me does not taste as fresh and also has a distinct chemical flavor. I haven't done a blind taste test, but those have been my observations over the years.

I'll let the defenders of processed uni speak to their position.

[tsquare]

Not a defender. I thought I did not like uni, until I got the good stuff. Similar to scallops in my opinion - as far as the difference in quality, taste and texture. You can make a non-liker into a liker with the good stuff.

Edited February 10, 2008 by tsquare (log)

[JWangSDC]

Not a defender. I thought I did not like uni, until I got the good stuff. Similar to scallops in my opinion - as far as the difference in quality, taste and texture. You can make a non-liker into a liker with the good stuff.

←

I am neutral but my bottomline is that I suspect that "fresh tray" uni is used for a reason in quality sushi restaurants. I have never had freshly cracked uni myself though I have been served uni it its shell (I am 90% sure that it came out of a tray and was just placed back into the shell for show.)

Now the most logical explanation I have heard is that it is much harder to determine the quality of uni while it is still in its shell. So naturally I'm guessing the best freshly cracked uni is better than the best tray of uni; but I see how the consistency of uni quality would be a problem with freshly cracked uni under those circumstances.

TBH though, people often mistake good quality with "freshness". Most things ripen after death and aging at the perfect time (like beef and Tuna, the "freshest" maguro is not hte best magura). I suspect this could also be true of uni.

Edited February 10, 2008 by JWangSDC (log)

[johnnyd]

Not a defender either, but uni of a certain age topped with a quail egg still ranks high on my list, just not as high as out of it's own shell.

When I was diving for urchins off the Maine coast during the boomlet of the mid nineties, I was a witness to processing technique. The majority of trays processed here were destined for Japanese chain supermarkets.

Off-loading freshly harvested sea urchins in Kennebunkport, Maine in 1994:

The major processing plants employed dozens of white coated, hair-net wearing people who cracked open each urchin with a custom-made stainless steel device and down the line they went.

Roe was extracted and dumped into flat, plastic seives, then bathed in a solution that removed any remaining shell particles and "tightened them up". I was told it was 4% alar per gallon of fresh water, but I'll have to check that when I see an old urchin buyer friend later this week.

(Fresh water kills seafood so it might have been a brine instead. Alar in food processing was banned in 1989. Being highly perishable and very delicate, the odds of a single "melt" were high and would ruin the presentation of the tray as a whole so something had to be done to prevent this during the long journey to Japan. The use of alar may have been allowed since virtually all of it was destined for export. I'll post again when I find out more.)

The uni were graded according to a color chart which will determine what price can be supported at auction. The best are installed in those pine boxes, the supermarket grade go in Styrofoam.

I've probably eaten uni at every stage of freshness. I developed a habit of cracking open one or two urchins from the day's first harvest bag - partly to taste any subtle differences in harvest locations, but mostly because there is nothing like fresh uni right out of the ocean.

At sushi bars, I've sent a few orders back. There isn't a sushi place on the planet that can fool me on freshness. I've been known to berate a waiter for disrespecting customers with some foul-tasting scum. If I've had enough sake, I'll go straight to the chef and tell them what I think.

Whole urchins out of the water eventually drain as they relax their grip on the water held inside the shell - much like a clam or oyster, only much faster. Stable temperatures, about 40°F, help keep the roe from spoiling before processing even though the urchins have drained overnight.

We've had to hold a few thousand pounds in a walk-in overnight owing to a late-night docking. Sometimes, the market price rises sharply overnight and we'll get paid more for day-old product. There is a slight degradation of flavor in an urchin that's lost it's water but I just may be more sensitive to it.

So there's a little light shed on uni processing. In my opinion, unless urchins are kept in some kind of aerated, salt-water aquarium with a bunch of native kelp to nibble on, it is highly unlikely a sushi bar can serve "fresh" uni, but that doesn't mean it still isn't top notch product. As mentioned previously there is something about the flavor of week-old uni. A certain maturation takes place. It's a matter of personal taste.

Edited February 10, 2008 by johnnyd (log)

[Fat Guy]

In my opinion, unless urchins are kept in some kind of aerated, salt-water aquarium with a bunch of native kelp to nibble on, it is highly unlikely a sushi bar can serve "fresh" uni

←

Some restaurants do get live uni, though. FedEx is the modern miracle that makes it possible. For the David Hawksworth dish mentioned above, several cartons of uni came from Vancouver Island overnight via FedEx. They were in foam coolers with gel packs, seaweed and paper. They were in great shape when we got them. At Nobu they have the uni right on the raw bar and they seem to do fine for a day. Pretty sure they come from Maine. Interestingly, Nobu is the only Japanese restaurant where I've seen live uni -- I'm sure there are others, but I haven't seen it anywhere else -- whereas I've seen live uni in many Western restaurant kitchens in both North America and Europe. I wonder if there's a food-safety issue, real or imagined. In the Western restaurants, the uni are almost always served as part of a cooked dish, not raw as they are at sushi bars.

[Hiroyuki]

The fresher the better. There is no doubt about that.

As someone has already mentioned, however, the problem with unshelled uni is that you never know how good a uni is until you crack it open (how much gonad it has in it and how fresh it is). Besides, it's cumbersome to crack it open at home and at a restaurant.

In Japan, alum is used to keep uni gonads in shape before being placed on a tray, and is the source of bitterness, but now a new type of uni called "ensui uni" (saltwater uni) or "kaisui uni" (seawater uni) has become popular. As the name implies, this type of uni is put in sterilized saltwater with the same concentration of salt was seawater. No alum is used.

Example of ensui uni:

http://www.siretoko.com/uni-w.htm

[Fat Guy]

I have a few educated guesses to make here, and maybe folks with better education can comment:

1. "Consistency" and "quality," used in the context of uni, are code words for the Japanese preference for uniform size and color. Flavor, however, may not be as unpredictable as size and color. For example, when Hawksworth and I cut open 240 urchins, there wasn't a lot of variation in flavor. The variation was in size and color. So this may be a conscious tradeoff and, in my opinion, a bad one.

2. The massive differential in labor, shipping costs, etc., can't be underestimated here. When I hear of such a huge differential, my first assumption is that every other explanation is an excuse meant to misdirect the consumer. Given the amount of uni served at a busy sushi bar in an evening, it would probably require an additional employee to prep it all. Not to mention, there would be a lot of waste, because sometimes you open one up and there's not much usable stuff in there.

3. This all becomes self-fulfilling. Because consumers have been conditioned to think uniform size and color are indications of quality (as with supermarket fruit), and because the chemical taste and unnaturally firm texture of processed uni are now part of the expected experience, they could actually be dissatisfied with the irregularity of superior uni from live urchins.

[johnnyd]

In Japan, alum is used to keep uni gonads in shape before being placed on a tray

Thank you for this clarification Hiroyuki. It didn't seem alar was a possibility after I looked it up and saw the ban, but I knew I was close.

[Hiroyuki]

Maybe a little off topic, but here is a photo of an example of seawater uni.

1,000 yen. My father likes uni, so I bought him one pack. He later told me that the uni was good but watery. I guess he didn't drain the uni enough before having it.