Persimmon Cheong | #72

Fermented Fruit Syrup from Korean Temple Cooking

What is cheong? I hear you say.

Cheong is a raw fruit syrup made from sugar and fruit, that draws juices from ingredients as the sugar dissolves into them. I first came across it a few years ago by accident when I shared a video showing how I make fermented fruit cordials and was politely informed by an ethusiast online that I was making cheong and not crediting Korean culture. Curious to learn more, I investigated further, but it wasn’t until this year when the book Korean Temple Cooking by Jeong Kwan was published in English that I finally got my hands on what is probably the most authentic version of the technique.

Korean Temple Cooking by Jeong Kwan

In it, Kwan describes cheong as a slow, fermented fruit syrup that she leaves for a full year before straining out the fruit to keep the fragrant syrup for cooking with. I found this observation particularly interesting as most say cheong isn’t fermented, but simply an extraction as the high sugar concentration creates an environment with too much osmotic stress for microbes to ferment. But I’ve always found they bubble away slowly nonetheless.

Once made, the sweet extraction can be used to balance and enhance savoury and bitter dishes with a fruity kick. Think in the same way wine or apple cider vinegar does but with the balancing effects of ingredients like mirin or a spoonful of honey.

If you think of flavour as a set of signals rather than a list of tastes, sweetness acts as a modulator: it suppresses the perception of bitterness and sharp acidity at a neural level, lowers the threshold at which saltiness and umami are perceived, and increases salivation, which helps volatile aromas spread more evenly across the palate. This is why a small amount of sweetness can make a dish taste more savoury without tasting sweet, or make acidity feel brighter rather than harsh. In practice, sweet extracts like cheong act to recalibrate our perception of other flavours, shifting how strongly different taste and aroma compounds are perceived, and allow bitter, sour, salty, and umami elements to coexist with greater clarity.

And, whilst a lot of the time this is achieved in restaurants with sugar, I always opt to use cheong instead for two reasons: it’s half the amount of sugar (the rest being juices from fruit or flowers, some of which are fermented into ethanol and acids), and it’s an opportunity to add even more flavour to a dish instead of just sweetness that comes from sugar.

In the early phase of making cheong, microbial activity is strongly inhibited: the sugar concentration is too high for most yeasts and bacteria to grow, so extraction dominates over fermentation. Over time, as the syrup dilutes and water activity increases, osmotolerant yeasts begin limited alcoholic fermentation, producing small amounts of ethanol, while acid-tolerant bacteria (including some lactic acid bacteria and acetic acid bacteria) may slowly contribute organic acids. This activity is typically low-level and gradual, often taking months, and may never progress to full fermentation if sugar concentration remains high. The resulting system is governed primarily by preservation through sugar and reduced water activity, with gentle microbial transformation rather than a fast, microbe-dominant ferment.

At the end of this article, I’ve included some interesting ways to use the cheong, but if you want to experience it directly, mix 1 teaspoon into a cup of hot water and sip as a tea. For this persimmon cheong, I highly recommend also infusing a piece of ginger root and lemon rind, and for the adventurous, a sprig of bruised verbena.

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Persimmon Cheong Recipe

Ingredients

1kg persimmons (firm-ripe is easiest to handle)
1kg pale, minimally processed sugar
(raw cane sugar is fine; golden/unrefined sugars work well; avoid very dark muscovado-style sugars unless you want heavy treacle notes)
A clean 2 litre jar with lid

Optional ingredients: lemon rind, citrus peel, and ginger root.
Optional equipment: kitchen scales, funnel, and a small weight to keep fruit submerged.

Ratio: 1:1 by weight (fruit : sugar).
If you want a slightly more shelf-stable cheong, go 1kg fruit : 1.1–1.2kg sugar.

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Method

1) Prepare the jar

Wash the jar and lid thoroughly. Whilst still warm, rinse it with boiling water and let it air-dry. The goal is to make sure it’s clean, but there’s no need to get hung up on making sure it’s sterile.

2) Prep the persimmons

Remove any bruised or mouldy parts. If using kaki types: slice into thin wedges or 1–2 cm pieces. If using very astringent types (common with unripe fruit): use them anyway, as the cheong process is forgiving, but the flavour will be more tannic early on and mellows with time.

Important: keep the pieces fairly small so sugar can pull juice quickly.

Note: If you’re here because you’ve read my article on making gotgam and want to use up the persimmon peelings, simply weigh the peelings and mix with an equal amount of sugar.

3) Weigh

Weigh your prepared fruit. You want about 1kg of fruit going into the jar.

Weigh the same amount of sugar (or 10–20% extra if you prefer a more stable, sweeter cheong).

4) Layer fruit and sugar

These are the peelings from making gotgam (see below)

Loosely toss the fruit and sugar together in a bowl then add them to the jar. Start with a handful of sugar, then a layer of persimmon. Repeat until finished, then end with a generous cap of sugar on top (this helps discourage surface growth).

5) Close and leave at cool room temperature

Seal the jar and leave it somewhere cool and out of direct light (roughly 15°C or lower is ideal). Within 12-48 hours you should see liquid pooling as the sugar pulls juice from the fruit.

6) Daily attention for the first week

After the first week, check to make sure the fruit isn’t floating above the liquid too much. If it is, press it down with a clean spoon, or use a small weight. Or, if you shake / invert the jar daily, you can ignore floating parts as they won’t be exposed to air at the surface for more than 24 hours at a time.

7) Extraction phase

After the first week, leave it mostly alone for 3-6 weeks, giving it an occasional gentle turn if undissolved sugar remains at the bottom.

You’re aiming for most of the sugar to be dissolved, the fruit to be suspended in a thick syrup, and the whole thing to have a clean, fruity aroma. Small bubbles will appear once ambient temperatures rise again in spring to above 18°C. This is the slow fermentation starting to kick in.

8) Strain

When the syrup tastes to your liking (anywhere from 2 months to 1 year later), strain through a sieve or cloth. Press gently, but don’t force cloudy pulp through unless you want a thicker, jammy cheong.

9) Bottle and store

Bottle into a clean jar/bottle and store in a fridge for the best preservation, or a cool pantry to allow it to continue evolving. Kwan suggests that new flavour nuances come forward after 3 years, if you have the self control.

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Using Persimmon Cheong

Persimmon cheong earns its place by slipping into familiar dishes in the kitchen. A spoonful works wonders in dressings where you’d normally have reached for honey. Brushed onto vegetables or mushrooms towards the end of roasting, it catches the heat and darkens, becoming glossy and fragrant, sweet enough to caramelise, acidic enough to balance richness. Stir it into a pan sauce or a pot to use like a sweet wine, or add a shot over ice cream to enjoy as an affogato.

Drizzle over ricotta, yoghurt, or a young cheese to bring lactic sweetness in a pairing similar to runny honey and goats cheese. In drinks, it replaces simple syrup and sweeteners, offering fruitiness and structure to cocktails, or dissolving into vinegar and soda water for something bright and grown-up.

Stir some in a pan of charred fruit or drizzle over the thick skin of oven baked rice pudding. Mixed into marinades with soy, garlic, and oil, it helps with browning and carries flavour. Or add some into doughs and buns, feeding yeast and leaving a faint trace of fruit in the crust. This year, I’m mixing cheong into my stollen recipe to replace the sugar in the dough.

Here are some more cheffy ways use it:

Persimmon cheong lacquered mushrooms

Roast or pan-sear large mushrooms (hen of the woods, maitake, oyster, or portobello) hard in butter or oil until deeply browned. Deglaze the pan with a spoonful of persimmon cheong and a splash of water or light stock, letting it reduce to a thin glaze that clings. Finish with a few drops of shoyu or tamari.

Serve with a loose miso cream (white miso, warm cream, a touch of garlic puree), spooned underneath or alongside. The cheong provides the fruit acidity that keeps the dish from feeling too rich and heavy, and it reads more like a sherry reduction than a sweet element. Tannic varieties improve the rounded smoothness of the dish too.

Persimmon cheong gastrique

Reduce persimmon cheong with cider vinegar (or sherry vinegar) until syrupy again, then thin with a little fish stock or water to make a light gastrique. Finish with a grind of white pepper.

Use sparingly with oily fish like mackerel, sardines, trout, or eel. The sweetness and acidity cuts the fat of the dish, and the persimmon adds a tannic, autumnal note that feels more composed than citrus (sorry lemons).

Persimmon cheong beurre monté

Reduce 1-2 tablespoons of persimmon cheong gently with 1-2 teaspoons of cider vinegar until it tastes sharp-sweet rather than sugary. Off the heat, whisk in 80-100g of cold, diced butter a piece at a time to form a loose beurre monté. If it cools too much, return to a gentle heat but don’t boil or the emulsion won’t hold. Finish with a pinch of salt.

Use this to glaze roasted or charred brassicas, sprouting broccoli, cavolo nero, Brussels sprouts, or cauliflower. The cheong brings fruit, tannin, and gentle acidity; the butter carries it, and the bitterness of the greens does the rest. It compliments the meal more like a wine-based sauce than a syrup by the time it’s done.

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Other fun things you can make from persimmons include:

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And that, my friends, concludes the final article this side of Christmas.
Whether you celebrate such festivities or not, I hope you have a nice break and enjoy some fresh air and tasty food. Over the next few days I plan to remove the paywalls on 5 of the most popular articles here on The Black Butter Club to provide you with some pleasant reading whilst you’ve got your feet up. The first of which is already free, my Miso Masterclass, which you can read here. So sit back, enjoy the cold, eat plenty, and I’ll see you in the new year.

Best wishes,
Sam