Shiso

Perilla frutescens

Shiso is a mint-family leaf native to China and India and established in Japanese food culture by the eighth or ninth century. Its defining fatty, herbaceous, spicy aroma comes from perillaldehyde, though some varieties lack that compound and lean toward dill or lemon instead.¹ Green and red-purple forms differ in more than color: the purple is carried by anthocyanins, while the leaves can also vary substantially in texture and aroma. New England records treat perilla as an introduced plant of roadsides, waste areas, and gardens in Connecticut and Massachusetts.²

In our handling, green shiso has been sturdier and more spinach-like, while purple shiso has been flimsier and slightly more acidic, somewhat like sorrel.

Shiso no ha refers to fermented red shiso leaf.

Red shiso (akajiso) is used as a coloring agent for umeboshi.

The red color comes from anthocyanin pigments, so it behaves differently from the green leaf even before preservation: the purple form carries both visual intensity and a more pronounced savory-herbal presence.³ Perilla is an introduced annual in the Northeast rather than a native woodland herb, but it is well suited to garden production and can reseed where plants are allowed to flower. In food terms, the leaf is unusually valuable because its aroma survives as a recognizable top note in salt, vinegar, and fruit preserves, while its soft tissue also takes on the flavor of a cure.

Here is a version where they make Shibazuke, which is traditional ferment of eggplant, shiso, and ginger.

To preserve, they can be salted and left in the fridge, then washed off when needed.

It can also be dried, and made into a seasoning powder, like furikake, with seaweed and sesame seed and such.

Shiso salt.

Shiso syrup for cocktails. What about a cheong?

Could make an umeboshi with peach or cherry or other stone fruit, preserving in salt and shiso?

Shiso infused vinegar.

1. nectarine shiso lacto → chutney with chilis
   • 147g nectarine
   • 8g shiso
   • 90g water
   • 5g salt
2. cucumber shiso black pepper pickle
   • 3% salt
   • 530g cucumber
   • 20g shiso
   • 4g black pepper
   • 862g total
   • 26g salt
3. Dried Shiso
   • Question - to wash or not?

The question about washing dried shiso is partly a question about texture and partly about handling: rinsing removes surface salt or soil but also adds water that must be removed again before the leaf is stable. That makes the notebook’s green-versus-purple comparison useful, since color, aroma, and leaf toughness may change independently during drying.