Premium sea urchin can fetch up to RM1,500/kg in the Japanese market - our series on luxe ingredients finds out why.
There are many ingredients that garner unanimous agreement as “premium” ingredients that easily cost an arm and a leg. One might not pay hundreds of ringgit for a serving of soup, but once something like ginseng is added into the mix, the price suddenly becomes justified.
Sea urchin – a creature once cursed by fishermen as a pest and routinely smashed with a hammer and its remains burnt – is the Japanese equivalent to such expensive foods that fetch a high price. It has grown to become a USD$100 million (approximately RM326 million) international industry on its own, being especially prized in Japan as a sushi delicacy. It has also, in recent years, garnered a reputation as an aphrodisiac.
Alaskans and fisherfolk in North Atlantic all the way to New Zealand have long eaten it as a source of protein. Certain Native American tribes have also been known to consume sea urchins but it was the Japanese who popularised it around the world. Why does a small dollop on it on your plate cost so much, however?
Premium sea urchin can fetch up to RM1,500 a kilogram in the Japanese market but that's just the urchins -- out of every urchin you get only a few grams of roe. Consequently, order sea urchin in any Japanese restaurant and you get no more than a few spoonful's worth of the golden orange delicacy, that sits like small tongues usually on sashimi platters.
“Overfishing,” says Chef Hideaki Nakajima, executive chef at Minori Japanese Restaurant, without the need for further elaboration. “We are running out of sea urchins to meet the rising demands.”
The next time you’re wondering why you’re paying so much for such a small serving of the seafood, keep in mind that not only is the source running out, the method of extraction is quite a painful one, too. It is tedious work to half the spiky, globular animal, which is a close kin to its flatter sand dollars cousin.
“Out of every sea urchin, you get less than a few tablespoons of roe,” Chef Nakajima puts it into perspective.
The parts you get served to you are, to put it bluntly, the gonads of both male and female sea urchins. Usually called sea urchin roe or corals, the sea urchin itself needs to be halved before the roe can be scooped out of the centre. Often eaten raw with a spritz of lemon juice or soy sauce and wasabi if you prefer the Japanese way, its coveted taste has been likened to that of a cross between oysters and crab meat.
Facing the possibility of a species wipe-out between being a much-sought-after seafood by man and being constantly fed on by other sea predators, we think the price for the hedgehog-like creatures is rather fair, after all.