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Bernice Chan

Japanese-American cooking teacher and food writer Sonoko Sakai loves everything about persimmons, from admiring their appearance to eating them.
“Traditionally in Japan, people would plant a persimmon tree to bring good luck. But unfortunately, people live in these high-rises now and they don’t plant trees any more in the cities,” she says, speaking to Style by video call from California.
“But if you go to the countryside, it’s so beautiful to see persimmons. In the fall, the leaves turn red and then fall. It gives you the sense of seasons. And when you see the persimmon, it is fiery red. That crimson colour is just so beautiful.”

Although persimmons are grown in Japan, they are actually a native fruit of China. Persimmons are also cultivated in Korea, Spain, Brazil and the US, mostly in California.
When the fruits ripen in the autumn, their sweet flesh has notes of honey or apricot, and the texture ranges from crisp to jellylike, depending on the variety. The two most common ones are Fuyu – which look like mini pumpkins, squat and round, with firm flesh – and Hachiya, which are acorn-shaped and need to fully ripen to develop their pleasing, pulpy texture.
As Sakai notes, there are many other varieties besides – such as Tsurunoko, also known as “chocolate persimmons” for their sweet, dark-brown flesh; Hyakume, very juicy and with golden skin; and Maru, with a crisp texture, and notes of coffee and cinnamon.
Chef Christine Wong of the website Conscious Cooking can’t resist Fuyu. “I don’t have the patience to wait for Hachiya to ripen,” she says with a laugh. “I love their sweet perfumed taste, but it’s the texture of the fruit that is the most satisfying – best when they are slightly soft and juicy, with the subtle, crunchy bite of the core,” explains the author of the vegan cookbook The Vibrant Hong Kong Table.

Fuyu persimmons can be eaten with or without the firm skin, while that of Hachiyas should be peeled off because it is too astringent. When Wong manages to hold off consuming the fruit raw, she makes persimmon jam and chutney.
The New York-based chef says the jam tastes like a very ripe persimmon, with a thicker, really jammy texture thanks to the fruit naturally having a lot of pectin.
She has also made spicy persimmon chutney combining red onion, garlic, ginger, cardamom, paprika, vinegar, bird’s eye chilli and sugar, which Wong uses as a condiment for falafel, and adds to rice with roasted vegetables.
For Mid-Autumn Festival in 2023, she made snow-skin mooncakes with a persimmon filling.
“I had purchased a case of overripe persimmons and the idea of making a paste for mooncakes made the most sense to preserve the fruit,” Wong says. “The glutinous rice flour skin was a perfect complement, without overpowering the flavour of the paste. As a home cook, I was able to make a few batches to share with friends during the Mid-Autumn Festival.”

Not only are persimmons delicious, they are also rich in fibre as well as antioxidants including beta-carotene and other vitamin A precursors.
A highly versatile fruit, the persimmon can be dried, eaten raw, or cooked and incorporated into cakes, puddings and bread. Persimmons can also be made into vinegar, or a syrup used in cocktails like Collins drinks, old fashioneds and gin fizzes.
For Koreans, persimmons are a highly prized fruit. New York-based Emily Kim Kwang-sook – known as Maangchi on YouTube – teaches her almost 6.5 million subscribers how to make Korean dishes, which includes the traditional snack gotgam-danji, or stuffed persimmons.

The labour-intensive recipe features finely crushed chestnuts, walnuts mixed with rice syrup, dried dates and pine nuts. These are combined with yuja-cheong, or yuzu marmalade, before the mixture is stuffed into a dried persimmon, which is then sliced into wedges and served with tea.
For Sakai, who was born in the US but grew up partly in Japan, persimmons are a metaphor for patience. “There’s a famous saying, Momokuri sannen, kaki hachinen, which means, ‘Peach and chestnut seeds take three years to bear fruit, persimmons take eight,’” she explains of the slow-maturing tree.
Even though she planted her Fuyu and Tsurunoko trees 15 years ago, it is only now that she is harvesting a good amount of fruit – although she has to be sure to get to the sweet persimmons before the squirrels and birds do.
In her 2019 book, Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors, Sakai describes the process of hoshigaki, or air-drying persimmons until their natural sugars crystallise, leaving a white dusting covering the dried fruit.
“They are the best dessert. They’re delicious. It’s like a finer date. I like dates, but they can be kind of mushy and really sweet,” Sakai says. “Persimmons are firmer, and they just look really elegant.”

The cooking teacher didn’t learn the art of hoshigaki until she was in her 50s. It was Laurence Hobin and Jeff Rieger, the owners of Penryn Orchard Specialties in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, who taught her. Specialists in growing and selling rare and heirloom fruits, Hobin and Rieger make their own Japanese dried persimmons, with a box of eight listed on their website for a princely US$75.
“It’s a lot, but it’s worth [the money] because you grow them, you pick them, and then you hang them up, and every day for a month you massage them,” Sakai explains.
For hoshigaki, the Hachiya variety is used. Sakai says that when the fruits are harvested, a T-shaped stem and branch should be left attached, crucial for hanging the persimmons during drying. Fruits sold in supermarkets have usually had their stems removed.
After washing the persimmons, she advises peeling the skin (leaving the stem), then hang them up using a sturdy string with a double knot. Space the fruits apart along a rack, similar to the kind used to air-dry laundry.
Sakai says the rack with the hanging persimmons can be taken outside each day, or else placed near a window with lots of sunshine to keep them out of reach of animals and birds.
As the persimmons begin drying out, this helps prevent mould from appearing. One week into the drying, the process of gently massaging the fruits begins.

“Don’t even try to make a dent – just touch it. [It should be] gentler than handling a baby – and massage with clean hands,” Sakai advises. “Then the sugars will start to gelatinise, and you start to feel them; then you can actually shape them into a rounder shape – but don’t press too hard. You always treat it gently.”
Hoshigaki generally take about a month – though in Los Angeles, Sakai says, the dried fruits are ready in about three weeks thanks to the dry climate. A fan can help air circulate, and she advises putting newspapers underneath the persimmons as they can sometimes drip.
Besides eating slices of dried persimmon with tea, as the Japanese do, Sakai says the dried fruit can be paired with cheese (particularly blue), walnuts and apples, or stuffed with adzuki or red bean paste.


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Peeling Hachiya persimmons in preparation for hoshigaki. Photo: Rick Poon

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Food writer Sonoko Sakai, chef Christine Wong and YouTuber Emily Kim, aka Maangchi, have all written cookbooks featuring the distinctive and exotic fruit


Food writer Sonoko Sakai, chef Christine Wong and YouTuber Emily Kim, aka Maangchi, have all written cookbooks featuring the distinctive and exotic fruit.


Food and agriculture

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Hong Kong

Why persimmons are cherished for their versatility and distinct varieties

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Food writer Sonoko Sakai, chef Christine Wong and YouTuber Emily Kim, aka Maangchi, have all written cookbooks featuring the distinctive and exotic fruit

Food writer Sonoko Sakai, chef Christine Wong and YouTuber Emily Kim, aka Maangchi, have all written cookbooks featuring the distinctive and exotic fruit