The benefits of mandarin orange
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What mandarins do
What this vegetable does
It settles how the stomach works and eases bloating, hiccups and burping
How to eat it
Good eaten fresh as it is, of course, and in juice or a salad.
A yakuzen note
Held to improve the circulation of qi, warm the Spleen and Stomach and clear phlegm and damp.
This vegetable, driedDried mandarin →
Mandarin is held to warm the body while settling how the gut works. Unusually among citrus, it is warm in nature, which makes it exactly right for the depths of winter.
TOC
When mandarins are in season, the varieties, and how to choose
If you want to bring in what mandarins do, deliciously, knowing the season, the varieties and how to choose makes them easier to choose. Well balanced between sweet and sour, they are good eaten as they are and used in cooking and confectionery.
Mandarins are in season in winter, and varieties keep them going
The common satsuma mandarin starts with the very early varieties around September and moves through early, mid and late varieties, lasting until around March. The peak of sweetness is roughly November to February. The main producing areas are Wakayama, Ehime and Shizuoka, and the taste shifts with the season: a fresh acidity early on, a deep sweetness at the peak. With few seeds and easy-to-peel skin, the satsuma can be peeled by hand without a knife, which has made it the fruit people eat while relaxing under the kotatsu. Grown across Japan, it is something the winter table cannot do without. From winter into early spring, related citrus such as dekopon, ponkan and setoka appear too.
How to choose a good mandarin
When choosing mandarins, these points make it easier to tell a sweet, ready one.
- A small calyx and deeply coloured skin
- A flat shape, with taut, glossy skin
- A good weight in the hand
One whose skin is loose and puffy may have air between skin and flesh and have lost water. Checking the weight in your hand makes it easier to choose a juicy mandarin.
Keeping them calyx-down
Stacked up, the ones underneath bruise under the weight. The calyx end has firmer skin, so laying them out calyx-down without stacking prevents crushing and drying. Keeping them somewhere cool and dark with air moving is the basic rule. When you buy a box, take them all out once, check for any that have spoiled, and lay them out again on paper, and they last longer. If you cannot eat them all, peeling them and freezing the segments is easy. Buying a little at a time and eating it soon is another way to keep them at their best.
How to eat mandarins
Eating them fresh is the standard, but a little thought widens the pleasure. Here are ways to bring them into daily life, including how to use the peel.
Eating the membrane and the white strands
The thin membrane around each segment, and the white strands on the flesh, hold fibre and pectin. Eaten membrane and all, they give a different substance from peeled segments. Rather than picking off every white strand, tasting them as they are is the trick to enjoying the whole fruit. The membrane has a faint bitterness that tightens the sweetness of the flesh nicely. For anyone bringing fruit in with health in mind, being able to use what is inside the peel is welcome. Worth knowing as a way of eating without losing what it holds.
Grilled mandarins and desserts
Grilling them whole over a wire rack or in a toaster oven is a long-standing pleasure. Heating brings the sweetness forward, and you peel them warm by hand. The juice squeezed into a drink, a jelly or an agar dessert, or added to a salad or a bake, lifts a dish with a faint sweet-sourness. Segments steeped in honey or syrup are easy with yoghurt or soda water. On a cold day, the juice with hot water poured over makes a hot mandarin drink. Dried mandarin is handy as a snack or a topping for yoghurt, its sweetness and acidity spreading as you chew. Floated in tea it is fragrant too, and a Japanese-grown product such as dried mandarin makes it easy to enjoy in any season.
Using the peel: chinpi and household wisdom
Dried peel of a ripe mandarin is the crude drug called chinpi, and it has long been used in shichimi. At home, wash the peel well, dry it for a few days and chop it finely for flavouring a dish, or pour hot water over it as a peel tea. Added to home-made shichimi, the citrus aroma rises softly. Dried peel has also been used around the house: floated in a cloth bag in the bath, or simmered into a liquid for wiping down surfaces. When using the peel, wash it well if that concerns you, or choose Japanese fruit to be sure. Other citrus peels are dried and used too, and a Japanese-grown product such as dried natsumikan peel gives you ideas for using the peel.
Alongside this, it is worth knowing about The benefits of ginger or The benefits of cinnamon, one held to nourish qi and blood, The benefits of jujube as a guide when building a table for the cold season.
Mandarin, in season in winter, is unusual among citrus in being held to warm the body, and it is a fruit whose peel can be put to use around the house. Eaten as it is, of course, and grilled or dried as chinpi: use the peel too and you get the whole of every fruit. As a pleasure of winter and early spring, bring it to your everyday table.
