How to make “Old School” Haam Ning Mung

Love the T-shirt? Click here! Your purchase helps support this website!

Here are the instructions for Haam Ning Mung, Chinese Salt Lemon, as I learned from my grandmother:

Collect a bunch of limes (or lemons) and scrub well. Place a layer of them in a large glass jar. Add enough rock salt to just cover. repeat the layers of salt and lemon until the jar is full. Put on the lid. A plastic lid is best.

Place the jar on the roof of your carport or other accessible sunny place that the cats won’t knock it off. (It’s heavy, but they will try!)

Let sit all summer. Bring inside if you get snow. They will be useable in 6-12 months of sunshine. They are better after 2-3 years. There is no upper age limit. They just keep getting better.

In addition to seasoning certain dishes (they may be listed in ingredients as Velvet Lemon) and as a snack, they are use as a sore throat remedy. Simply suck on a small piece of the peel to stimulate salivation and ease sore throat. It also helps replace electrolytes lost due to illness.

If you keep it a long time, eventually you will have a lot of juice in the bottom of the jar. This can be used as a glaze on duck, as sore throat syrup, etc.

Hawaiʻi variations:

* Add li hing mui powder before setting to ferment

* Add licorice football before setting to ferment

* Cut lemons/limes in half and squeeze, reserve the juice for other things. Put a spoonful of sugar inside each half, then pack in jar as normal.

Celebrating Hawaiʻi Foods and Lifestyles since 1983

Kau kau (pronounced “cow cow”) means “food,” or “meal” in Hawaiian pidgin. It is also used to mean “to eat,” as in “let’s go kau kau” – “let’s go eat.”

The Kau Kau Kitchen cooking column started in 1983 in the Hawaiʻi Tribune Herald. Then-editor Sherm Frederick was looking for a new cooking column. I suggested my mother. Sherm was excited, and said he’d love to have a local person write the column. I eplained that my mother actually lives in California. Ok, that would not do. So I asked if he minded if I wrote the column, myself. He invited me to submit some columns, and thus my writing career began.

The first column was on the Kona Coffee Festival. I’ve still got a copy of it somewhere. As soon as I find it, I’ll post it.

After writing it for a year or so, I self-syndicated and it began appearing in the Maui Sun newspaper, a small magazine in Las Vegas, and a few other publications catering to HawaiÊ»i expats. It also grew into a radio show on KHLO, and a short-lived TV show on Hilo’s old Channel 2. Diamond Papaya did a Kau Kau Kitchen special on Papayas, and the brand was featured in some local cooking events created to promote local agriculture and food products. Some cookbooks and kitchen products also spun off the original column.

I was fortunate to be invited to lots of great foodie events I never would have otherwise seen, and I got to meet many wonderful folks in the industry. But juggling all of that was a lot of work. I ended up putting Kau Kau Kitchen on “autopilot” for a few years and returned to school, seeking a degree in journalism.

After a number of career twists and turns, with Kau Kau Kitchen cruising along, primarily existing as books and occasional event or media appearances, the Internet was born. Kau Kau Kitchen went on-line.

I’d already been producing Kaʻahele Hawaiʻi (by now the world’s oldest Hawaiian culture and arts website), for a few years. Konabob Stoffer of KonaWeb had helped me to set it up. So putting Kau Kau Kitchen online seemed quite doable. It was much more cost effective than paper publishing, and I could reach far more people.

Now, after 40 years of covering Hawaiʻi’s mixed-plate food and culture, I am looking forward to what the future will bring!

A hui hou!
~Leilehua