I will be pruning my yuzu tree soon and am curious is anyone knows of any recipes that utilize them. I did an online search which says that they *are* used and can be cooked with, but almost all the recipes I’ve seen listed use the juice & zest and not the leaves.
Does anyone have experience cooking with or have eaten dishes with yuzu leaves? I imagine they aren’t wildly different than cooking with lime leaves in use, but will certainly have a different flavor and aroma.
Any advice is welcome, thank you! 🙂
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Are they aromatic at all? I’d think you could get an idea of what to use them in by looking to Cambodian/Thai/Viet recipes that use lime leaves. They’re sure to have a similar application (pot herb in soups, ground together with other aromatics like garlic and lemongrass to coat beef for sauteing, etc)
It is strongly fragrant, though doesn’t have much of a flavor on the tongue. When used in cooking, it smells a lot like yuzu-kosho actually, having both the fragrance of yuzu paired with a level of spice-like mild acridity.
In super thin slivers, it makes a good topping for things like suimono where you lift the lid and take in the fragrance before you sip.
It can also used in pretty much all the same ways as kinome (sansho leaves), though it does have a different flavor. Also since yuzu leaves are tough it’s best to either leave them whole so they can be removed, or chiffonade them into extremely fine slivers.
I recommend trying a kinome-ae recipe, but replacing the kinome with yuzu leaves.
Boil them and make tea