Scroll to the bottom for the 2019 update! I have found the correct recipe!

Anybody who knows me has heard me rant about Korean pickled plums at least once. When I lived in the US, I searched high and low for any version of the plum I could buy online, and eventually found the following three:

• Green preserved plums (not dried, kind of salty)
• Korean plum wine
• Korean plum extract

The above links are all very similar to products I’ve tried and have a taste that is similar to pickled plums (notably the plum wine, which sometimes actually has a plum or two in the bottle, depending on the brand!). The Chinese word for the plum is 青梅 or qīng méi (green berry), and the Korean word is 매실 or maeshil (plum). In any case, please note: these plums are a little fuzzy. You can find non-fuzzy, fresh green plums on Amazon that are the same color and apparently also sour when ripe, but I honestly don’t know if it’s the same thing. It’s worth an investigation, though!

Nobody gets my obsession. It’s pretty disappointing. Anybody who ever went skydiving and then tried to explain it to their friends with an excited face, lots of expressive movements and vivid description only to be met with “wow!… I guess you had to be there…” knows what I’m getting at. I personally have never been skydiving, but I assume it’s similar to eating green pickled plums from South Korea. (See what I did there??) I even talked about it in episode 3 of our podcast, with the secret agenda that someone would bring me some. So far no luck.

I should mention that the Chinese and the Japanese pickle and dry these plums, too. It’s all gross. Nowhere near the mouthgasm of Korean pickled plums. There are some things that Chinese do very well (like hot pot), and there are some things the Japanese do even better (like oysters). But when it comes to delicious pickling, Korea has the upper hand, hands down (what conflicting idioms!!).

The Beginning

It all started when I was living in Korea in 2013, and a friend in our city recommended something called the Maewha (MAY-wah) Festival in Gwangyang, South Korea — a town a bit south of Gwangju, where we lived. The Maewha (매화) festival is similar to the cherry blossom festival, except the trees bloom a few weeks before Cherry Blossoms and the flowers are more of a light pink/white color. They also produce a very sour plum (apricot?) called maeshil (매실, pronounced MAY-sheel) that are usually ripe in May or June. It’s a beautiful little festival near the Yellow Sea. The trees grow on the side of a mountain, through which you can follow a path and enjoy the flowering trees (pictured above). In 2013 and 2014 when I went, there was also lavender ice cream being served at some point throughout the route, which was pretty delicious. Other touristy opportunities include a whale dish (not my favorite), tree root tea (literally in the top 3 most disgusting things I’ve ever tried), and a photo op in front of a picture of the trees (yeah, that’s Asia for you). But at the bottom of the mountain is a series of small tents set up with little old lady (할머니 – halmeoni or “grandmother”) vendors, selling the pickled version of the tree’s fruit, called maeshil jangajji (매실 장아찌). They all bring their pickled plums from the previous year to sell … to me. Once I started, it was game over.

An Addict’s Life

I’m not proud of where things went from there. I went through a half kilo of plums the afternoon I got home from the Maewha festival in 2013. We went back the following weekend and I bought another 3 kilos, which were gone in a week. I then spent the following year stalking my Korean friends to see how likely it was that their grandmothers would give or sell me their pickled plums. It turned out to be rather unlikely. This is supposed to be a medicinal-purpose food: you eat it after dinner to help you digest. Like one or two bites. But the thing is that the plums taste like baked apples mixed with, I guess, cocaine. God’s food, I tell you. Oh yeah, the fermentation also creates a low alcohol content. Korean plum wine is commonly sold in grocery stores across the world, but pickled plums are not something that can be purchased anywhere, except at the Maewha festival. You can buy maeshil jangajji online in Korea but, as of now, they do not ship internationally. I also did not know this in Korea.

Eventually, I was asking any new Korean I met who would give me the time of day whether their grandmother pickled plums. Sometimes they would answer yes, at which point I would ask them with a completely straight face how I might be able to acquire them. They usually laughed shyly, and then I had to explain my high level of seriousness (but was still not taken seriously). I was successful thrice. OK, one good friend ended up giving me her grandmother’s maeshil two times, so technically I came in at two successes. At some point along the line I learned the recipe. It’s not very complicated. One part sugar, one part plum. Put them in a cool, dry place for 1-2 weeks, and voilà! Your plums are ready. I actually did try pickling them in 2014, but I did not cut out the pits. They were OK, but definitely not up to Korean grandmother standards. After I left Korea, I almost made peace with the fact that I would never eat them again… until this weekend.

A New Hope

Well, that brings me to Saturday. I was going through my local grocery store when I almost had a heart attack in the produce section. It was my plums!! Hooray for plums! I immediately snatched up as many as possible, and then completely forgot everything else I was there to buy (sorry Seth). I then quickly pickled them… incorrectly. Several times. Here’s the way that finally worked.

Step 1. Wash and dry the plums.

Step 2. Using a toothpick or something else that’s similarly sized, remove the little brown piece where the plum grew from the stem. There might also be some stem leftover. This piece gives the end result a bitter taste, which we want to avoid.

Step 3. Cut up the plums, removing the pits.

Step 4. Mix the plums with white sugar. In weight, you should have a ratio of plum to sugar of about 1 to 0.8. Set aside a bit of the sugar for the last step.

Step 5: Put the plums in a sterilized jar, and top with the leftover sugar. You will need to push them down, hitting the side of the jar for any air bubbles to rise to the top. Keep them at room temperature for about 1 week.

The top layer of plums might have brown skin because of oxidization, but they should be safe to eat. The plums might also shrink over the course of a week.

Now, in 2019, there is no, I repeat no information about Korean green pickled plums on the English-speaking internet. I will be updating this, letting you know how they turn out!!

These are my plums!!! They came out a little more sour than I would like, because I eyeballed the sugar. It just feels like there’s SOO much sugar!! But I think they are actually pretty good for digestion. I’m also kinda proud I finally accomplished this after years of obsession.

The plums are usually enjoyed as a side dish, after dinner to aid digestion, or with some Korean spicy pepper powder. I’ve also seen them spicy eaten over rice. Personally, I just prefer to snack on them all day. If you make them, let me know how it goes!!

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you click on them and buy something, I might make a minuscule amount of money, and it won’t cost you a thing! Just FYI.