Uchiki Kuri Squash

Uchiki Kuri, AKA Red Kuri Squash, is an excellent Japanese heirloom winter squash known to be both reliable and productive.

It produces pear-shaped fruits with eye catching glossy red-orange outer skin making them look a bit like small pumpkins. The flesh of the fruit is deep orange flesh with a sweet, delicate and rich chestnut-like flavour.

It is often prized for its long-keeping qualities and dependable cropping — even in poor summers it typically outperforms squash varieties like butternut.

Similar to the Green Hokkaido, another of our favourites, the skin does not have to be removed before cooking. It is lovely as an oven roast or in a soup etc.

Each plant typically yields 2-3 striking looking fruits that weights 1-3 kg.

It can allegedly be trellised to save space, something we have not tried.

Harvest before frost when the skin is hard and the stem is drying. Cure it somewhere warm, airy and dry before moving them to a frost-free store. Keeps 4-5 months in good conditions.

Additional information
Cucurbita maxima was domesticated very early in South American and Mesoamerican region. Squashes first reached Japan in the mid 16th century with Portuguese traders traveling via Cambodia. It’s suggested that the word kabosha may be derived from the protugese cabaça (gourd) or Camboja (Portuguese for Cambodia).

Kuri (栗) means chestnut in Japanese — a direct reference to the dense, sweet, chestnut-like flavour of the flesh. It descends from Hubbard squashes that were introduced in Japan after 1878 when trade with US was opened up.