Sushi

Variations

• Nigiri: Press small mounds of rice, dab wasabi, and top with fish.
• California roll: An inside-out (nude) roll with crab, avocado, and cucumber.
• Inari: Stuff seasoned fried tofu pouches with shari for an easy version.
• Temaki (hand roll): Top nori with rice and fillings and roll it into a cone yourself.

Tips

• The rice dishes around it define themselves against this dish's vinegar, and each one says what it is for. Gimbap: "There is no vinegar in the rice, and that is the real difference from sushi. Sushi's vinegar is not only a flavour: it drops the pH and helps the rice keep, and sesame oil does nothing of the sort." Onigiri says it keeps less well "for exactly that reason", and poke leaves its rice plain and puts the seasoning on the fish instead. Shari is 80% of sushi because the vinegar is doing two jobs at once.
• Which is why it goes in while the rice is hot. Hot grains are still taking up liquid; cooled ones have set and the vinegar sits on the outside, seasoning the surface and reaching none of the starch (cooking rice). The fanning is not cooling for its own sake either — it drives off the surface moisture the vinegar brought, which is where the gloss comes from.
• The cutting strokes are protecting the grain. Spam musubi states the failure plainly: "compacted to a paste, the grain structure disappears and there is nothing to chew." Rice that has been stirred is one material; rice that has been cut through stays a pile of separate grains that a roll can still hold together.
• Wet hands and a firm roll are the same problem from two sides. The stickiness that makes a roll hold is surface starch, so anything dry it touches — hands, blade, board — takes some with it and tears the surface. Water is a release layer, and it is also why the knife is wiped between cuts rather than pushed through a second time.
• Shari (vinegared rice) is 80% of sushi — cook the rice firm, mix in the vinegar while warm, and cool it.
• Fold the rice with cutting strokes, not mashing, and fan it for shine.
• Keep your hands and knife wet so the rice doesn't stick.
• Roll tightly with the mat so it holds together.
• Use only fresh 'sashimi-grade' fish raw — otherwise stick to cooked fillings and vegetables.