- The yuzu is an exclusive product.
It's five to 10 times the price of a regular lemon.
- But the money that it costs is well worth it.
The original thought process of growing yuzu
was just for ourselves because we fell in love with it.
From there, we had a really dumb idea.
We said, you know what?
Let's try to sell it
to some of the local restaurants in Princeton.
The first thing we thought about was
the fancy restaurant called Elements.
- They loved it. - They absolutely loved it.
- Yeah, they wanted more.
- Then an idea sparked in our head
that it makes sense probably to grow
this on a commercial level and provide exotic citrus
to chefs in restaurants
and breweries in the tri-state area.
- So, Scott's gonna be breaking down the hamachi
and we're gonna be taking all the collars off.
(hand banging)
Doing a fried fish, citrus is pretty important
and we decided to do a yuzu and a little bit of sudachi
and we marinate them in a smoked buttermilk,
a kosho that we make with citrus, as well as our chilies.
And we'll just let that sit there for
probably about 30 minutes.
And then we'll start dredging them.
(oil sizzling)
I'm just gonna grate in some zest, right on it.
(soft upbeat music)
- [Vivek] Yuzu is actually a hybrid between mandarin orange
and a ichang papeda.
- [Seema] In Japan, yuzu has been growing
for thousands of years on mountain slopes
around the area of Kuji City.
The trees are old and barks that are about this thick.
They left to the elements.
The ground around the trees is littered with falling yuzu.
When we saw that we were really shocked.
For us, that was wasted.
- In the winter, the temperatures can go down
quite substantially.
However, that's what the yuzu really likes.
And that's what gives the yuzu its flavor.
- So, I'm just cutting the tops off for yuzu cups.
This is probably one of the first dishes
we ever ever did with the yuzu marmalade.
That's made with the yellow yuzu.
The custard in.
And then we take a meringue
that's made with our yuzu juice.
And we'll just put a little bit of fresh juice right on top.
- The first time we encountered yuzu
was about 20 years ago in New York City.
Went to some fancy restaurants
and absolutely fell in love with the yuzu.
So we were looking for the yuzu
and finally tracked it down
at an Asian grocery store in Northern Jersey.
Brought it home and made the hamachi with yuzu soy
with the jalapeno and said, yeah, this is going to be good.
(chuckling) So we really had a good time.
We were left with a lot of seeds
and I told Seema, you know what, honey, what do you lose?
Literally in four weeks
we had these little saplings of yuzu
and said to ourselves, see Seema, I told you.
- We'll have yuzu trees in no time.
- Yeah, exactly, we'll have it in four weeks.
We kept bringing these plants in in the winter.
Taking it out in the summer.
And this nonsense went on for 12 years.
- We've always hopeful, right?
Every year we would be like,
oh, is it going to be this year now?
Now they'll flower, now they'll flower.
- The lack of knowledge actually kept us going.
- Going with it. - That was the key.
- We had decided year 12 was the last year.
I think the trees heard us
and they put out flowers to save their own lives possibly.
And then the fruit set, we had fruit
and that was so exciting, we had our own yuzu.
I think we bought hamachi that year everyday.
Just so we could use the yuzu.
Spent so much money on that --
- Hamachi. - Hamachi, I tell you.
It was crazy.
We'll actually move to the trees at the back --
- Which are the original ones.
- Which are literally the original trees
and be careful of the thorns, there are plenty of them.
You don't want to get yourself scratched.
- Well, you can get scratched.
Don't let it scratch your camera.
- (laughing) So, the best way to describe it is
like literally these are our like firstborns, you know?
So, they're extra special to us.
15 years ago we had about nine trees.
And now we are left with two trees originally from seed.
- We realized very quickly
that if we had to bring any scale to our operation,
we couldn't be growing things from seed.
So we had to learn how to graft.
- So most citrus trees you will see
will have a bump at the bottom.
And if it has a bump
that means it is definitely grafted from bud wood.
A, it provides the cold hardiness that we really need.
And B, it feels like you can actually get
some of the flavors of the trifoliate orange.
So, this is our conventional yuzu.
What I'm trying to do is find a branch
that has a lot of buds on it.
All we are going to do is get these leaves off.
So this is the bud that will actually be transplanted
from the yuzu onto a host plant
which is the trifoliate orange.
So this is a trifoliate orange, which is three years old.
My daughter who's the expert
is actually going to do some grafting for us.
I'm going to be using the T-budding method
to graft on this tree.
So here, I'm going to make an upside down T cut
and I'm use a backside of this knife
just to open the graft at the cambium layer.
So this is the bud
that my dad brought in from the yuzu tree outside.
I'm gonna take this bud right here
and I'm going to cut up right at the cambium layer.
And I'm just going to insert it so
that it's sticking to the tree where I made the cut.
So now I'm going to take a piece of budding tape
and I'm going to tie it really tight around the graft
so it retains the moisture that was from the air.
- You know, I started doing this on my own
but she developed such a fascination for this.
And she's so good that I just told her, honey, go ahead.
And you just do it from now on.
- We do it three to four times per tree
just to maximize the chances
of the tree actually taking and becoming a yuzu tree.
- Survival of the fittest.
That's how it works in citrus.
So this is a yuzu that was grafted about eight weeks ago.
- This is where the grafts coming out from.
The original tree that we grafted on is trying to come back.
So normally what we do is we just take a pair of scissors
and we just cut that off just so that the tree's main focus
is on growing the graft
and not on growing itself, essentially.
- This is the next phase of grafting.
At this stage, you can pretty much comfortably say
that yes, the graft has taken.
So the extra growth that Simran was talking about
which is from the tree itself can be removed.
And then this graft can be cut off.
And now the entire tree is going to grow from here.
So this tree will go out for the spring, summer and fall.
Come back in for the winter.
And hopefully in three years,
we'll have beautiful yuzu on it.
Because of the extreme weather
that we have in the Northeast,
we are guaranteed to lose at least 20 to 30% of these trees.
That's the reason why we have so many
because they're just not going to make it.
Hopefully it moves from this to those right over there.
- This is a prime example of how
a regular yuzu tree looks at this time of year.
Most of the fruit is turning yellow.
It's ready for harvest.
- Today we need to bring 30 pounds to James at the Referend.
- I think these are good for James.
He likes them this blue. - Yeah he likes it this color.
This is going to the Referend.
All right, James, here's your 30 pounds,
green and yellow both together.
- Beautiful. - Just the way you like it.
- It takes working with him on the early harvest,
also on the late harvest to know like
what's going to work best with our beer.
- I remember your first call when you said,
"Do you grow citrus?"
I said, yeah, we do. - In New Jersey?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Now we get to zest them. - Yeah, okay.
- So, whenever we get in fruit, it's pretty much
we try to work with it as quickly as possible.
This is much more expensive per pound
than any other fruit that we work with
but it's also that much more potent.
So you don't need as much.
So now we're just going to I think, siphon out into it.
All right, I think it's ready.
I'll add some CO2.
So this is, yeah, just our main spontaneous base beer.
Yeah, the youngest that gets used for.
Two months for it to do the full kind of zest extraction
and give us all the aroma
that we're looking for out of the yuzu.
(hammer banging)
Then we'll rack it into a tank,
blend it back with the older beer and bottle it.
And then post-bottling still another
usually six to 12 months before we'll sell it.
- One of our biggest problem here in New Jersey
is the amount of snow we get.
We've lost about six or seven trees.
With snow sitting on them
just doesn't help the trees at all.
- The fact that we have just recently grafted this tree
we'll probably want to move this in first
so that it gets protected from the weather.
They've got hooked up to this watering system
that we have developed.
We have hundreds of these emitters.
There's a spray that comes out on a timer.
Within a month, all the yuzu and all other citrus
that we have, everything will be in this room.
If we didn't have this greenhouse, we didn't have this room,
this project would fall flat on its face.
- Because of the milder temperatures inside
the trees also start flowering earlier,
which just is spectacular. - It's spectacular.
- The whole greenhouse is going to be filled with citrus
blossoms and so fragrant. - Very fragrant.
- It's a pleasure to just be in this room at that time.
- Growing yuzu is part of the challenge.
The other half of the challenge
is actually selling the yuzu.
- It's always nice to give chefs fruit with leaves.
Presentation is extremely important.
- Very early on we realized
that in the food and beverage industry
there's a lot of touching, feeling,
using that goes into selling.
When somebody uses your product
is when they want more of it.
- Hi, Chef Joe. - Hello.
- Here's some yuzu from our farm.
- This is picked for you this morning.
- We're so excited about this.
Thank you so much.
Look how beautiful that is too.
Even the leaves alone we could use for garnish,
it's very nice.
We've got to take the mask down through this, guys.
It's beautiful.
Whenever we have somebody that wants to typically sell it
to us we say put it in our hands
so we can see what we're working with.
- It's a sense of instant gratification to us
that all that effort was really worth it, you know.
- The reaction on your face --
- You guys are the--
- Right now we're looking to
change one of our fish dishes, the crudo,
so I think yuzu would be perfect for it.
Probably look to have about, you know,
five to seven pounds a week.
- Okay. - For what we'd be using.
- We should be able to give it to you
till the end of January for sure.
- Yuzu is the king of the citrus,
I think we would all agree on in the chef world.
Anytime that I think of raw fish,
the first thing that comes to mind is citrus, in general.
But typically I'll think of yuzu.
It's not quite like a standard, isn't a lemon or a lime.
It's kind of like in between both
with the hint of like sweetness from an orange.
So, this is fermented farro.
I think it's going to pair very well with the yuzu
and we're going to use both the zest and the juice.
And I think yuzu is also a very typical ingredient nowadays.
It's not hard to find, but it is hard to find something
that's coming in your backyard.
So that's a win-win on flavor
and also on, you know, the environmental impact.
So typically when we're trying out a dish,
you know, we'll get a few mouths to try it.
I always trust Justin here.
And we'll kind of evaluate and go from there.
- Really fresh.
- Citrus is great, no?
- Yeah, fresh, beautiful.
- One of the reasons we even got the impetus
to move forward with trying to commercialize
was I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.
It makes you realize
that you don't have the time that you think you do.
So, for the longest time, our conversations were,
should we sell the yuzu to the restaurants?
And then after my diagnosis and treatment,
when I was back up on my feet,
I think our reaction was, okay, we just got to try it.
That was a big reason
for even considering something as crazy as
trying to grow yuzu here in New Jersey.
Ready for pickup.