Japanese Apples

[Hiroyuki]

Most apple pie recipes in Japan suggest using kougyoku (紅玉). Unfortunately, they are so hard to come by, especially in rural areas like mine.

I wonder if Granny Smith is similar to kougyoku in taste and texture.

[AzianBrewer]

Most apple pie recipes in Japan suggest using kougyoku (紅玉).  Unfortunately, they are so hard to come by,   especially in rural areas like mine.

I wonder if Granny Smith is similar to kougyoku in taste and texture.

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Granny Smith (green) apples are tart and hard. The apple flavor are quite intense.

[helenjp]

We had an apple tasting the other day - obviously only of the early varieties.

Just had a delivery of Sun-Jonagold (Jonathan x Golden Delicious). Apparently "sun" has nothing to do with variety, just means the fruit was not put in a paper bag on the tree, but was exposed to the sun. They are delicious - crisp, sweet, aromatic, and enough sharpness too.

We had some Sun-Tsugaru (Golden Delicious x Kougyoku) last month, and I couldn't help feeling they had been held over chilled from the 2005 harvest. Hope I'm wrong, but for an early season apple, they were oddly mealy, lacking in aroma, and rotten brown at the core.

Kougyoku - small red apples - these were nice, sweet and very aromatic but also high acid. Yellowy flesh, not super-crisp, but not mealy either. The old favorite in Japan for cooking.

Sekai-ichi - this was the hardest and one of the sharpest tasting apples we tried. It was nice, but not as good as the Jonagold.

Shinano-Sweet. My sons liked this, and said it was aromatic as well as sweet. It's a Fuji x Tsugaru cross, and to me it shows its Red Delicious heritage in a kind of musty, off, bitter odor, but maybe I'm the only one who thinks Red Delicious and Fuji apples taste that way!

Ourin - mild, large, green apple. (Golden Delicious x Indo) Best eaten fairly fresh, as the very pleasant aroma dissipates and the flesh gradually gets flabby. A lovely apple though. Indo is not an Indian apple, by the way - it's a sport from one of the apple varieties introduced from Indiana last century, apparently.

[Hiroyuki]

So, did you actually buy any of those varieties??

[helenjp]

Yes yes, we bought one each (apart from the 10kg box of Sun-Jonagold...)

In fact, that's how I almost came to mistake the name of "Shinano-Sweet". The label said "Shinano Sweet Rose" in katakana...but then I realized that was "bara" meaning "sold individually", not "bara" meaning "rose"!

That was a Big Treat for us - all the apples cost over 100 yen each, and one cost 200 yen .

It was nice to get fresh Kougyoku though - often the cheap ones are old and flabby.

[torakris]

In fact, that's how I almost came to mistake the name of "Shinano-Sweet". The label said "Shinano Sweet Rose" in katakana...but then I realized that was "bara" meaning "sold individually", not "bara" meaning "rose"!

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I just had to smile at that...

I have made numerous reading mistakes like that in the past as well..

[Hiroyuki]

These three varieties were sold individually at the local supermarket.

Left to right: Fuji, Ourin, and Sun Jona Gold.

They were 98 yen each.

Other varieties were sold too, but not individually but in plastic bags.

I think the Sun Jona Gold is waxed and probably the Ourin too.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

Those Fujis are beautiful... the ones in the grocery stores here aren't quite as red.

The Ourins look a lot like the Golden Delicious I get in the grocery stores here.

[GlorifiedRice]

New Zealand persuaded Japan to relax laws restricting imports of pip and stone fruit, and began exporting apples to Japan a few years ago, and the US followed suit within 12 months. However the US has the disadvantage of having apples in season at the same time as Japan - add shipping time, and US apples are coming on market right at the peak supply period for Japan's main crop.

However, I wonder if other factors such as the rather high US dollar in recent years has also made a difference?

I do occasionally see NZ apples, but not that many. Hard to say if they are here or not, as my local supermarket seems to be stocking an increasingly restricted range of goods.

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Helen?

Does Japan pick and hold mass quantities of underripe fruit and hold them just above freezing and gas them to quick ripen them before market like the USA does?

I think thats why we have alot of crappy produce on the market cheap in the USA. If I want good peaches I have to buy Harry and Davids Oregold Peaches or for awhile I was buying Saturn/UFO peaches

but they started to pick those early and gas em too and its back to Harry and David...

Im convinced that this treatment is what produces mealy fruit...

UFO/Saturn Peaches

[GlorifiedRice]

I still think Granny Smith is best for apple pie.

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I wish we had granny smith over here...

good apples for baking in Japan, that is one of the things I have always meant to take notes on but I never do.

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Kristin? You have a backyard, have your family in Ohio send you some Granny Smith seeds and start introducing the neighbors to Granny Smith...

[helenjp]

I'm pretty sure apples (and probably other fruit) are stored, but I haven't ever checked into artificial ripening here. I should do that before I make any rash statements but that will take a couple of days.

[JasonTrue]

Actually I believe you'd have to bring a cutting (which is tricky due to customs restrictions) because apple seeds produce very different offspring from the seed than their parents.

All of the marketable apple varieties are actually clones.

Kristin? You have a backyard, have your family in Ohio send you some Granny Smith seeds and start introducing the neighbors to Granny Smith...

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[helenjp]

Most apple pie recipes in Japan suggest using kougyoku (紅玉). Unfortunately, they are so hard to come by

I could swear that there's a revival goin' on out thar in the woods! I'm seeing more of these, especially this year.

They really do cook nicely, though they don't get pulpy like Granny Smiths. I simmered some with a few cheap figs, and the red color in the skins leached prettily into the flesh. They also kept their flavor, and just enough acidity, when cooked.

[Chris Amirault]

Reading the comments above about Mutsus I thought I'd toss in this observation: picked right off a tree, this apple is one floral, fruity, crisp bit of heaven. Beats me how they are after a few weeks of sitting around, but if you can find them fresh, grab them.

[prasantrin]

Has anyone tried those big dark red apples? They look like huge red delicious apples. I think they were "akagen" or something like that. I wanted to try one, but they're even more expensive than the other apples (and I'm not a big fan of Japanese apples), so I'm waiting until someone else tries them first.

I wonder if they'd be good for baking.

[prasantrin]

Related to Japanese apples, has anyone found apple cider in Japan? Not the alcoholic version, but the non-alcoholic type you can get in Vermont in the fall.

A friend and I were talking about it the other day, and it made me want to make some mulled cider. But I'd have to find the cider before I could mull it!

[torakris]

Related to Japanese apples, has anyone found apple cider in Japan? 

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Never. I seem to get cravings for it about this time of year as well..

[prasantrin]

Never. I seem to get cravings for it about this time of year as well..

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Crap. You'd think with all the apples around, you'd be able to find some apple cider! I even checked the Tengu website, and and my local organic store, but nothing.

I wonder if I could make my own...Or just doctor up some regular apple juice?

[helenjp]

Kaldi sometimes has cider (a French brand, was it???).

[_john]

I have made cider in Japan before with cheap apples. I blend up all the apples and then put them into a big piece of cloth. Then, with the help of another person, I twist up the cloth over a bowl using two dowels. This is the best way to extract the maximum amount of juice without a press. If I am making it for a party I usually mix the fresh juice half and half with store bought %100 apple juice. This works especially well if you are going to heat it when making mulled cider. I have never seen cider worth buying in any stores here.

[JasonTrue]

I'm fairly sure I've seen unfiltered apple juice in department stores once or twice, but it was rather extravagantly expensive. I'm not sure if it was as thick as the ideal non-alcoholic apple cider in the US, because I wasn't about to pay 1500 yen for a liter of it when the most expensive ones in Seattle are about $8/gallon.

[torakris]

I have tried a couple products over the years here and have not yet found what I am looking for. Around this time of year there are bottles labeled apple cider but these are the Japanese version of 'cider' thus a carbonated product, usually a sparkling apple juice. Many. many years ago I bought one of those expensive bottles in a department store basement and while it did taste like freshly squeezed apple juice, it wasn't the thick almost fermented like taste I was looking for.

Of course it has been so long since I have tasted true apple cider I wonder if I am even remembering the taste right??

[sanrensho]

If we're referring to pressed, non-carbonated, non-alcoholic, unfiltered (cloudy) and unpasteurized apple juice, then I've had it in Japan. However, the stuff we had came from a relative's orchard in Nagano-ken, and was for family consumption only.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how one would source it in Japan aside from making friends with a grower, but at least we know it exists.

And, yes, the cider (pressed juice) we had was very very good. The juice was much more whitish than the usual apple cider I see sold here.

Edited November 26, 2007 by sanrensho (log)

[JasonTrue]

Unfortunately "apple cider" has no legal definition even in the US, so it can refer to almost anything, from fermented alcoholic drinks, to sparkling apple juice (which we used as "champagne" for children when I was a kid, and I still have at festive events so that people can have their champagne flutes without getting drunk), to spiced ultra-pasteurized apple juice, to the unfermented but unfiltered product that I remember from our "pioneer" days in elementary school made of pressed apples, cloudy because it isn't filtered like the industrially processed apple juice.

http://www.horenso.com/shop/applejuice_col...ml 　looks very much like unfiltered apple juice (apparently depicted frozen on the web site).

I have tried a couple products over the years here and have not yet found what I am looking for. Around this time of year there are bottles labeled apple cider but these are the Japanese version of 'cider' thus a carbonated product, usually a sparkling apple juice. Many. many years ago I bought one of those expensive bottles in a department store basement and while it did taste like freshly squeezed apple juice, it wasn't the thick almost fermented like taste I was looking for.

Of course it has been so long since I have tasted true apple cider I wonder if I am even remembering the taste right??

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Edited November 27, 2007 by JasonTrue (log)