is a type of pickled
daikon
Daikon or mooli, ''Radish, Raphanus sativus'' Variety (botany), var. ''longipinnatus,'' is a mild-flavored winter radish usually characterized by fast-growing leaves and a long, white, root. Originally native to continental East Asia, daikon ...
popular in
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
, a sort of
tsukemono. It is made by pickling daikon with
sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...
,
salt
Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quantitie ...
, and
sake
Sake, also spelled saké ( ; also referred to as Japanese rice wine), is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name ''Japanese rice wine'', sake, and indee ...
without filtering
koji. The name ''bettarazuke'' is taken from the stickiness of koji left over from the pickling process. Bettarazuke has a crisp sweet taste.
Bettarazuke has similar figure to
takuan, but bettarazuke contains a lot of moisture because it doesn't need sun-drying process.
On the night of every October 19 in the area around Takarada Ebisu shrine, ''Bettara Ichi'' (literally, "bettara fair") is held to sell the year's freshly pickled bettarazuke.
References
Japanese pickles
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