British wasabi pioneers spicing up Japanese cuisine across Europe

You can't beat fresh wasabi. I like it on my steak with low salt soy sauce just as much as on my sashimi/sushi. The stuff in toothpaste tubes work, but give me fresh anytime missus.

It is surprising hard to cultivate according to my Taiwanese doctor friend who is also a good cook.

The fresh wasabi is expensive.

https://www.thewasabicompany.co.uk/fresh-wasabi

Used in many Japanese dishes.

The price. Fetching nearly $160 (£98) per kilogram at wholesale, in addition to being hard to nurture, wasabi is also one of the most lucrative plants on the planet. "It is much like gold - we expect to pay a lot for gold. Well, we expect to pay a lot for wasabi"

Fresh wasabi roots from the Wasabi Company are £250 per kilo. Much lower prices here.

In my supermarket you get a good root for about ¥900!!!! Sometimes my neighbours give me a few roots as presents for when I make my own version of sushi. They think it's funny but humour me all the same. Lol.

In my supermarket, you get a good root for about ¥900!!!!

You proved my point. UK wasabi is expensive and cheaper here.

That's nice. I'm glad I could be of assistance.

Elvis...

The stuff in toothpaste tubes work,

stuff is correct, those tubes contain no real wasabi at all. Mostly colored and flavored horseradish. Fine until you get real wasabi, then you never want to eat it again.

I thought he would be growing sawa wasabi, the (lower grade) stuff grown in soil shaded by woods, but the story describes the real McCoy wasabi grown in flowing water.

Here in Nagano, they make a big deal about the difficulty of growing wasabi, requiring a near constant supply of 12-14C water that is claimed to be ultraclean. Britain has been recently suffered numerous cases of water companies dumping sewage into rivers, its a daily occurrence, so I'm not surprised they are using an underground supply.

Groundwater pumped from 40 meters below flows like a stream underfoot, and thick gravel of different shapes and sizes replicates an environment much like the natural streams where wasabi, known by the scientific name eutrema japonicum, grows in Japan.

I like wasabi senbei. I wonder when wasabi will get on the crisps?

There are already wasabi crisps/chips.

kohakuebisu

I thought he would be growing sawa wasabi, the (lower grade) stuff grown in soil shaded by woods, but the story describes the real McCoy wasabi grown in flowing water.

> Here in Nagano, they make a big deal about the difficulty of growing wasabi, requiring a near constant supply of 12-14C water that is claimed to be ultraclean. Britain has been recently suffered numerous cases of water companies dumping sewage into rivers, its a daily occurrence, so I'm not surprised they are using an underground supply.

We lived in Nagano for 10 years and still have a family house there. The best wasabi is from Azumino and the best beer is also from Azumino with the snow water.

I also love my steak with wasabi. No condiments, soy sauce, or steak sauce, just wasabi. No time/money for the real stuff, so the tube hon-wasabi from the supermarket, good enough for me

The deeper the green the better the wasabi. Supermarkets provide free little packets for sushi and many of those are very good.

Timeon

I like wasabi with me steak sometimes, also I just season with salt. I don’t like fancy sources on me meat or fish you see. Not keen on soy sauce so it ain’t easy over here sometimes, lol

But a trip to Japan's Shizuoka Prefecture -- initially met with some hesitation from growers of the plant -- to learn from experienced wasabi farmers proved invaluable.

I wonder if he visited the fields in Ikadaba. Would like to go cycling around there and have a look at the terraces myself.