Preserved Redbuds

While I was making the rambutan jelly, I had almost 1 quart of them and they’re around for such a short amount of time, so I wanted to preserve them for the future. Looking at my half-filled cambro of these flowers I was reminded of sakura flowers that are preserved for tea.

By the time I took this photo, most of the flowers were already being brined.

It’s been a long time since I had sakura tea, but I remembered how comforting it can be to have this subtly floral, salty, and sour tea. The redbuds are not as floral as sakura, but I still wanted to try something similar. After quickly looking up how it’s made, it seemed simple enough for me to try the entire process. From what I found about making sakura tea, it’s pretty much pickling the flowers in umeboshi vinegar, then slightly drying it and salt packing it.

My pantry and fridge is filled with preserved things and I occasionally go through red shiso in other cooking. I’ll keep the shiso stems in a jar filled with rice vinegar to make shiso vinegar. It’s not quite the same as umeboshi vinegar, but it’s something I can work with to make it taste a lot like umeboshi vinegar..

As a shot in the dark, I tried a brine that’s 40% shiso vinegar and 60% water. From that total amount of liquid, I added 3% salt by weight knowing that it will still be salt packed later. After 3 days of brining, I drained it for a little until it looked a little bit damp. Finely ground some kosher salt and packed the flowers in it.

I would do this again, but my brine was definitely not vinegary enough. Maybe next time I’d reverse the proportion to 60:40 vinegar:water or go as high as 80:20. The tea is still comforting, but the sourness doesn’t come out at all. I could also wash the flowers and re-cure them in a stronger vinegar, but they lose some color after the pickling process. Another idea that I could use with the flowers is to treat them like capers. After all, capers are pickled flower buds too.