Japanese Premium Murasaki Sea Urchin【100g+】

Murasaki — the Northern Purple Urchin

Murasaki (紫云丹) means "purple sea urchin", named for its long dark spines. Graded for raw eating and laid out whole in a tray, handled cold the whole way, so the lobes arrive holding their shape rather than broken down into a loose mass.

It is the quieter of the two urchins most people meet. The colour is a pale gold rather than the deep orange of a bafun, and the flavour follows: soft, creamy, gently sweet, with a clean finish that does not linger. If bafun is sometimes too rich to eat much of, this is the one you can keep eating.

Why This One

• Sashimi grade: prepared for raw eating, straight from tray to plate.

• Pale gold: lighter and more elegant on the plate than deep-orange urchin.

• Clean, gentle sweetness: delicate rather than heavy.

• Kelp-fed: a faint seaweed note behind the sweetness.

• Whole lobes: sorted and laid out, so they hold their shape.

How To Serve It

• On its own: a lobe at a time, unadorned.

• Uni don: over warm seasoned rice, with nothing louder than shredded nori.

• Nori hand roll: crisp nori, a little rice, urchin, eaten immediately.

• With raw scallop or prawn: a lobe set on a sweet raw slice, no sauce at all.

• Through pasta: folded into hot pasta off the heat, never cooked.

The one rule: go easy on the soy. Soy and wasabi at the levels you would use on tuna will erase it entirely. Taste a lobe plain first — usually it needs nothing.

Handling

• Eat raw: this is intended to be eaten raw. Pregnant women, young children, older people and anyone immunocompromised should cook it through instead.

• Keep: refrigerated at 0–4°C, tray flat and sealed. Do not freeze — the lobes rupture and turn to water on thawing.

• Eat within: a day or two of delivery.