Dried Winter Persimmons

Persimmons are a fun fruit to grow, the trees get pretty big and loaded with bright orange fruits and remain productive for decades. In the Fall when they drop their leaves, the fruits stay on, looking like bizarre Christmas ornaments against the bare branches.

There’s two types of persimmons: astringent and non-astringent. Astringency is that feeling when you bite into a banana peel and your mouth suddenly goes dry. The astringent type, like Hachiya, are often elongated and pointed and need to be fully ripened (bletted) before it turns soft, sweet, juicy, and syrupy. Usually we leave it out on the porch or outside a window until it ripens, sometimes going through a frost or two. I grow the astringent type (although I’m now at a new location and started over with another tree—they are sensitive to transplant but once established, super hardy.)

Fuyu persimmons on the other hand are non-astringent and can be eaten as is, crispy and juicy and sweet. Both types can be dried although Hachiya are more commonly used. They are called shìbǐng (柿餅) in Chinese, hoshigaki (干し柿) in Japanese, and gotgam (곶감) in Korean

In order to do so, normally you’d skin them, string them up by the stems (I use butchers twine), and hang them in the eaves of the house during winter, squeezing them every day as you pass by to make sure they turn out tender. When dried, they’re like dates, and can be used much in the same way. Depending on how dry it is where you are, it can take between 3-6 weeks to fully dry them. Due to their high sugar content, they aren’t very likely to go bad unless you live in a very humid area.

If you don’t have eaves upon which to hang them (I don’t), a clothes drying rack in the garage or kitchen works too! Serve it with tea on a chilly afternoon, or diced and mixed into rice to make a sweet and savory rice ball.