For centuries, the Japanese have been making dried persimmons, called hoshigaki, using a traditional method. These chewy, mildly sweet fruits are commonly enjoyed as a tea sweet, particularly with green tea.
At their most basic, hoshigaki are persimmons that are peeled and hung until they shrivel and a natural sugar coating forms on their surface. But there's more to it than that.
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Hoshigaki (from the Japanese terms hoshi, meaning dried, and kaki, persimmon) are dried persimmons, made with a centuries-old technique that’s both incredibly simple and ridiculously labor-intensive. Each persimmon must be peeled, tied, hung, and gently massaged every day for four to six weeks, until they reach the perfect level of dried-yet-pliant texture and darkly sweet, warm spice-y flavor. Over time, the fruit’s natural sugars crystallize into a powdery white skin across its surface, the prized “sugar bloom” that sets hoshigaki apart from more mundane dried fruit...
The investment in time and effort has led some to compare hoshigaki to Kobe beef, which requires ranchers to massage their cattle daily to achieve rich marbling. While the comparison is catchy, in truth, making hoshigaki is a far more accessible process. “Anyone can make it — all you need is access to the fruit, a knife, and some string,” says Rieger. “But it takes an amazing amount of your own personal time, and you cannot cheat the process. So if someone gives you a box, it means they care about you enough to invest a lot of time and effort into your gift.”