Shiso

This page is about the shiso variety of the herb, esp. in Japanese cuisine context. See Perilla for a wider survey that covers wild sesame and uses across countries. See Perilla (plant) and Perilla frutescens for in-depth botany and biochemistry. For the city in Japan see Shisō, Hyōgo

File:Wasabi on green shiso leaves by june29.jpg

A green shiso leaf used as receptacle to hold grated wasabi

Shiso (/ˈʃiːsoʊ/, Japanese: 紫蘇 or シソ, [ɕiso̞]) is the more widely used name of the Asian culinary herb Perilla frutescens var. crispa, belonging to the mint family.

This herb was previously known as the "beefsteak plant", a mostly obsolete name. It is also sometimes referred to by its genus name "Perilla", which is ambiguous, as it is also inclusive of the wild sesame variety, which is devoid of the distinctive shiso fragrance.

Overview

Shiso is a perennial plant that may be cultivated as an annual in temperate climates, and occurs in both red- (or purple-) leaved and green forms. There are also frilly, ruffled-leaved forms called chirimen-jiso and forms that are red only on top, called katamen-jiso.

The Japanese name shiso (紫蘇^?, シソ) is a loan word from Chinese zisu (Chinese: 紫苏; pinyin: zǐsū; Wade–Giles: tsu-su), whose first character 「紫(shi, murasaki)」 means "purple".

Traditionally in Japan shiso denoted the purple-red form. In recent years green is considered typical, and red considered atypical.

Red shiso

The purple-red type may be known as akajiso (赤ジソ/紅ジソ, "red shiso"). The quintessential use is for coloring the pickled plum, or umeboshi. The shiso leaf turns bright red when it reacts with the umezu, the vinegary brine that wells up from the plums after being pickled in their vats. The red pigment is identified as the Perilla anthocyanin, aka shisonin. The mature red leaves are not very amenable to use as a raw salad leaf. But germinated sprouts me-jiso (芽ジソ) have been used for years as garnish to accent a Japanese dish such as a plate of sashimi. Also used are the hanaho (花穂, flower cluster) or hojiso, which are sprigs or stalks studded with tiny-cupped flowers and forming seeds. The tiny pellets of buds and seed pods can be scraped off using the chopstick or fingers and mixed into the soy sauce dip to add the distinct spicy flavor. The sprouts and flowerheads of the green variety are also used the same way.

Green shiso

Bunches of green shiso leaves packaged in styrofoam trays are now familiar sights on the supermarket shelves in Japan, as well as in Japanese food markets in the West. But production in earnest as leafy herb did not begin until the 1960s.

One anecdote is that around 1961, a certain cooperative or guild of tsuma (ツマ, "garnish") commodities based in Shizuoka Prefecture picked large-sized green leaves of shiso and shipped them out to the Osaka market, and gained popularity, so that ōba (大葉, "big leaf") became the trade name for bunches of picked green leaves forever after.

A dissenting account places its origin in the city of Toyohashi, Aichi, the foremost ōba-producer in the country, and claims Toyohashi's Greenhouse Horticultural Agricultural Cooperative (豊橋園芸農協) experimented with planting c. 1955, and around 1962 started merchandizing the leaf part as Ōba, and in 1963 organized "cooperative sorting and sales" of the crop (kyōsen kyōhan (共選・共販), analogous to cranberry cooperatives in the US). By c. 1970, they achieved year-round production.

Culinary use

See under Perilla for a survey of the herbal and spice uses of the species in different countries

Japan

A whole leaf of green shiso is often used as a receptacle to hold wasabi, or various tsuma (garnishes) and ken (daikon radishes, etc., sliced into fine threads). It seems to have superseded baran, the serrated green plastic film, named after the Aspidistra plant, that graced takeout sushi boxes in bygone days.

Green leaves

File:Spaghetti and shiso.jpg

Spaghetti topped with minced shiso garnish

The green leaf can be chopped up and used as herb or condiments for an assortment of cold dishes such as:

• cold noodles (hiyamugi, sōmen)
• cold tofu (known as Hiyayakko)
• tataki and [[{{{1}}}]]

Chopped leaves can used to flavor any number of fillings or batter to be cooked, for use in warm dishes. A whole leaf battered only on the obverse side is made into tempura. Whole leaves are often combined with shrimp or other fried items.

Red leaves

Red leaves are used for making pickled plum (umeboshi) as mentioned, but this is no longer a yearly chore undertaken by the average household. Red shiso is used to color [[{{{1}}}]], a type of pickled eggplant (also cucumber, myoga, shiso seeds may be used), Kyoto specialty.

Seeds

The seed pods or berries of the shiso are also salted and preserved as a sort of spice. They can be combined with fine slivers of daikon, for instance, to make a simple salad.

One source from the 1960s says that oil expressed from shiso seeds was once used for deep-frying purposes.

Sprouts

The germinated sprouts (cotyledons) used as garnish are known as mejiso (芽ジソ). Another reference refers to the me-jiso as the moyashi (sprout) of the shiso.

Any time it is mentioned that shiso "buds" are used, there is reason to suspect this is a mistranslation for "sprouts" since the word me (芽) can mean either.

Though young buds or shoots are not usually used in restaurants, the me-jiso used could be microgreen size. People engaged in growing their own shiso in planters, will also refer to the plucked seedlings they have thinned as mejiso.

Yukari

The name yukari refers to dried and pulverized red-shiso flakes, and has passed into the common tongue as a generic term, even though [[{{{1}}}]] insists it is the proprietary name for its products. The term yukari-no-iro has signified the color purple since the olden days, based on a poem in the Kokin Wakashū about a murasaki or gromwell blooming in Musashino (old name for Tokyo area). Moreover, the term [[{{{1}}}]] has long been used as an alias for Lady Murasaki's famous romance of the shining prince.

Furikake

Other than the yukari variety, there are many commercial brand furikake type sprinkle-seasoning products that contain shiso as well. They can be sprinkled on rice or mixed into musubi. They are often sprinkled on pasta.

The shiso pasta can be made from fresh chopped leaves, sometimes combined with the crumbled roe of tarako, and the trick to success is not to cook the cod roe on the stove top, but to just to toss the hot pasta into it.

Nutritional

Bactericidal and preservative effects of the shiso, due to the presence of terpenes such as perilla alcohol, have been noted.

Further etymology

The word ōba was originally a trade name and was not entered into the Shin Meikai kokugo jiten until its 5th edition (Kindaichi 1997), and is not found in 4th edition (1989). This dictionary is more progressive the Kojien cited previously, as Kindaichi's dictionary, from the 1st ed. (1972), and definitely in the 2nd ed. (1974) defined shiso as a plant with leaves of "purple(green) color".

Statistical data

Change in annual shiso production

Growth year	Production in Tons
1976	7
1977	9
1978	11
1979	11
1980	12
1981	12
1982	13
1983	15
1984	18
1985	19
1986	19
1987	19
1988	18
1989	18
1990	17
1991	17
1992	17
1993	16
1994	15
1995	15
1996	14
1997	14
1998	14
1999	11
2000	13

The bar graph shows the trend in total production of shiso in Japan. (Source:Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Japan) statistics. For green shiso, cumuative figures for shiso as vegetable is used.)

Raw data start from year 1960 (Showa 35), but for the shiso, the production figure was either negligible (far less than 1000t) or unavailable until the year 1976, as shown.

The 1970s was when refrigerated storage and refrigerated transport came online for shiso; but the same technology was bringing fresh produce and seafood to meal tables of ever-remoter parts away from farms or seaports. So foods like sashimi which was not daily fare for every Japanese was becoming exactly that, and the green shiso leaves, developed as a tsuma food item (i.e., garnish esp. for sashimi) quickly began to gain ground.

The no. 1 producer of produce type shiso among the 47 todofuken in Japan is Aichi Prefecture, boasting 3,852 tons, representing 37.0% of national production (based on latest available FY2008 data). Another source uses greenhouse-grown production of 3,528 tons as the figure better representation actual ōba production, and according to this, the prefecture has a 56% share. The difference in percentage is an indicator that in Aichi, the leaves are 90% greenhouse produced, whereas nationwide, the ratio is just 60:40 in favor of indoors over open fields.

As aforestated, Toyohashi, Aichi is the city which produces the most shiso vegetable in Japan. They are followed in ranking by Namegata, Ibaraki.

There seems to be a growth spurt for shiso crops grown for industrial use. The data shows the following trend for crops targeted for oil and perfumery.

Sources

References

(Herb books)

(Cookbooks)

(Nutrition and chemistry)

• , pp. 26–7

(Japanese dictionaries)

• . Japanese dictionary.
• (world encyclopedia, in Japanese). The botany section by Yoshisuke, Satake (佐竹義輔); agricultural and nutrition by Nishi, Sadao (西貞夫); culinary sectio by Motoyama,Tekishū (本山荻舟).

(Japanese misc. sites)

• : right navbar "9 農業(野菜)"

(Ministry statistics)

• . It gives to ink to H12 (FY2000), H14 (FY2002), H16 (FY2004), H18 (FY2006), H20 (FY2008) figures. They are not direct links to Excel sheets, but jump to TOC pages at e-stat.go.jp site. The latest available is TOC for The FY2008(年次) Regional Specialty Vegetable Production Status Study, published 11/26/2010. Under Category 3-1 Vegetables by crop and prefecture: acreage, harvest yield, etc. (野菜の品目別、都道府県別生産状況 作物面積収穫量等), find 10th crop shiso (しそ), and click Excel button to open p008-20-014.xls. Under Category 3-2, you can also retrieve Vegetable by crop and prefecture: major cutivars at major-producing municipalities (野菜の品目別、都道府県別生産状況 主要品種主要市町村 ).
• . Under Reports (View of Statisticl Tables) (報告書（統計表一覧）), click most recent year, e.g. FY2009 (平成21年度〔Excel：e-Stat〕) which is a TOC page not a direct Excel link.On this TOC(FY2009), under category: "Major Items By Crop Cumulative Tables" 主要項目の品目別累年表), locate heading 2-4-1, and next to "Vegetables Domestic Production Breakdown" (野菜の国内生産量の内訳) click adjacent Excel button for data (h001-21-071.xls).
• . Links to H14 (FY2000) - H19 (FY2007) biannual figures, not direct link to Excel but jump to TOC pages at e-stat.go.jp site. The latest available is TOC for The FY2007(年次) Specialty Vegetable Production Realized Study, published 3/23/2010. Locate 1-1-10 is Shiso (しそ), where heading reads " Industrial crop sown acreage and production" (工芸作物の作付面積及び生産量, and click Excel button to open p003-19-010.xls.

External links

• . This site is nominally available in English, but the search engine is not very robust.