EPT
But like all TLers, I like to take my break by reading here, and I came across the 'sushi how to-' by pyrogenetix and a good reply by ZERG_RUSSIAN and I was impressed by pyrogenetix's achievements and also ZERG_RUSSIAN's observations. http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=82908
And not to take anything away from them, as sushi is quite varied in its preparation, I'd say the average Japanese housewife is quite bad at even making a sushi roll (maki) properly.
But quick fact: MightyAtom was a professional sushi apprentice on and off for about 4 years. I say apprentice, because I never made nigiri sushi and made rice for close to 8 months and washed dishes when I wasn't making rice. Even when I was make maki sushi, I was still washing dishes. The place I worked for doesn't exist any more, the owner screwed his partners and fled back to Japan. But my master was from Hokkaido and I worked part-time throughout the year and full time during the summers. Eventually I was forced to quit due to my studies and even though my master wanted to open a sushi strip club with me, unfortunately, while I should have done that I chose to study theology.
But I will give you an exact run down of what you should do and why and how over the next 10 mins, I have come out retirement only a few times in the last 15 years, to impress my fiancée then my in-laws after marriage. But after you go through such intense training, well, its hard to forget.
Now I think both of them have the basic principles down, but the following are trade secrets; after all traditionally in Japan the apprentice spends like 5 years just making rice, luckily I just had to do for just 8 months.
The following is what is the professional standard and the actual execution while straightforward is quite difficult to master with complete consistency and speed.
Rice:
short grain only - Japanese or Korean is fine - think one cup is about 3 rolls
Measure:
measure exactly how much rice you used before you put it in
Wash:
-wash in cold water, but wash quickly and carefully-
*should not be more than 3 minutes*
-I always just used the rice cooker pot for this but now they have cool plastic anti-static bowls
-first just rinse it with the water, letting it run through it and letting all the impurities float up and picking out any grain that you can see is broken, deformed or black (assuming you're using non-pesticide rice)
-then pour out as much water as you can
30 seconds
-then fill the water up so it just covers the top of the rice
-then simply move your hand through the rice in a circular motion with the rice rubbing against each other doing this quickly about 8 times with gentle hands
30 seconds
-then put in water so it about double the rice's depth, and then gently move the rice through the open water, it will be very cloudy
10 seconds
-then pour out the water and the put in as much water as you can in the pot and make each grain float through the water
30 seconds
-then repeat by pouring out the water quickly and refilling it and make the grains float through the water with your hand gently lifting them up into the water
20 seconds
It doesn't matter how many times you rinse, you gotta do this process quickly- you need to imagine this is a continuous motion of events, there is no wasted movement, everything you do is to clean this rice properly and quickly.
Why quickly- the problem is with rice is that the longer you wash it, the more it has a chance to break and it will absorb water. How much water it actually absorbs will be different according to the time it is exposed to the water and thus screw up everything in terms of absolute consistency.
But if you can wash it quickly before nearly any effect of water absorption can occur, then your measurements will be correct moving forward.
Also, a big chobo mistake is washing the rice grains too hard, its hard to explain, but a true sushi chef is one with the rice, every grain, we feel it, we know it, from when it is a grain to when it is cooked to when it is prepared, we know how far to press it.
If you wash the rice too hard, you'll take off more than the excess starch on the surface, but actually wash part of the surface of the rice and thus make trying to get a 'clear water' harder as there are more particles now to rinse away and thus taking longer to actually wash the rice.
Drain:
drain the water out quickly with the rice still in the pot, do not let any rice fall out, and you will know after many months of practice how to extract the water without an avalanche of rice falling out because you will know exactly when that avalanche of rice will collapse.
Add water:
put exactly the same amount of water equal to that of the rice EXACTLY THE SAME
the reason why other restaurants put less water in is because:
1. they wash it too long
2. let let it sit before adding in water
3. they think that the rice will be less sticky so they can handle the rice easier
4. in the case of more water (not usually the case), but would be more sticky and easier to manipulate into a shape but that might as well be a rice cake in the eyes of a professional.
Again, this shouldn't take more time than literally just turning on the water and putting the exact amount in to the mark on the inside of the pot, which you know 100% is correct, regardless if there is still a bit of water in the washed rice grains to begin with because you've done this about a thousand times.
Add Sake:
Add a splash of cold sake
Add a big piece of dried kombu to the top (wash it quickly with water before you put it in)
Then close the lid, and press the cook button.
The rice will take about 20 mins to 25 mins to cook depending on your cooker, but the main thing is you must be mindful of when you hear it, the 'tink' when the rice is now cooked and the cook button pops up.
IMPORTANT
you must wait exactly, exactly 15mins from that point on, you cannot open the rice before or after that point and you can't miss it.
The rice continues to cook after the cooker stops actively cooking it.
*Sushi Vinegar
usually this is made beforehand and made exactly every time, but there is no water added
it is just rice vinegar, pinch of salt, splash of mirin, and sugar fully dissolved into the rice vinegar.
The taste should a full tang of sweetness and sharpness- if that 'full sweetness' will hit you if you've basically saturated the vinegar with the sugar.
UBER IMPORTANT
-Your wooden tub should have been washed the day before and still a little bit damp, if not you will rinse it one time to see the water penetrate the colour of the wood then wipe it down fully.
-at exactly the 15min mark, you will toss open the lid of the rice cooker and holding the metal pot with one hand (using a towel), you will in one motion bring it over the wooden tub and 3 diagonal cutting motions dump the rice in the middle of the tub.
5 seconds max
-AS THE STEAM IS RISING UP FROM THE MOUNTAIN OF RICE, you will pour the prepared vinegar over your rice paddle and over the rice.
-As the steam leaves the rice, the vinegar will penetrate into the heart of the rice
-quickly spread the rice by 'pushing it over' and then breaking up the rice so that they can all get equally exposed to the vinegar solution as not all of the vinegar solution will have been absorbed.
-you're not scooping the rice or mixing it you are 'pushing the rice over top of one another' -just don't think of the rice as a whole, but always feel the rice as individual grains.
-smooth it out evenly and then after 10 mins, flip over once and then rebreak the rice patches that you flipped over and push the rice again as little as necessary, but do do it, again, feel the rice in how much it can be pushed.
Then cover with slightly damp cheese cloth- after another 15-20 mins, transfer the still slightly warm rice to your sushi rice container, covering the top with the slightly damp cheese cloth.
The Result
Your sushi rice will have a deep inner shine to it, but be perfectly fluffy on the outside, each grain will be able to be separated but with a flick of your finger, and will only just barely stick together and will stand alone as a perfect grain of rice demanding its own space. This rice will simply be un-manipulable in the hands of a novice as the grains of rice will be everywhere messing up the water bowl and table, and their nirigi will simply fall apart, and the only way to make it stick would be to press it harder but instead of become mush, the shape will simply fragment into different pieces.
But in the hands of a master, this rice will flows as if it like water in the hands, as the master is able to make the nigiri with just the right equal force to allow the nigiri to keep its shape, while holding the maximum internal distance between the rices so that when you pop it into your mouth the rice suddenly falls apart into fluffy shower of beauty.
And for the maki, the same thing will apply;
-as you make your ball of rice you start from the top left corner and then allow the ball to become a wave of rice as you push the top of the rice forward with just enough force of the bottom to hold to the nori and then you will pull down the that upper layer of rice to the bottom.
Nigiri should be made in only about 7 continuous motion, fish in hand, getting the rice ball and forming it in 2-3 movements, wasabi applied, rice ball placed, one squeeze, flipped one squeeze, then placed.
About 3 seconds per Nigiri
The longer your hand touches the fish, the worse it is. Plus the rice is not cold, it is still slightly warm.
Maki should be rolled and cut within 20-30 seconds depending upon the components of the roll, the actual edges of the nori in a tekka maki, should meet on one side in the middle with just a slight overlap.
Whenever I go to a very good sushi place, I will order the tekka maki to see if the guy is really any good or not and I do this even in Japan and I've been to some sick places where you'd think the sushi would be awesome but it wasn't like the Park Hyatt in Tokyo/Roppongi.
Other interesting points to know:
if you don't get real wasabi, and you are preparing at home with powder, note there are some brands of powdered wasabi that are hot to smell or hot to taste. If you know the difference, you should mix the two together.
When you mix the wasabi, mix the water into the powder and do it slowly so that the water is completely absorbed and so on until it becomes a dough like consistency. Use slightly warm water and it will bring out the true flavour of the wasabi and use a spoon to vigorously mix then mash it.
You haven't mixed it enough until your eyes start to water from the vapour.
The bowl you use to wash your knife with when cutting the sushi or to cover your knife with, the water should be ice cold, even putting in ice cubes is fine.
When you cut anything, it must be a full slicing motion of the blade;
the sushi knife, besides having a high carbon content, is shaped as if the the entire knife is the blade edge, meaning that the cutting blade isn't just 1 cm, but rather both sides are knife are completely flat forming a triangle opposed to a pencil type shape.
You need to sharpen the sushi blade (and there are different kinds for cutting the fish etc), but the one you see at the sushi bar- to the point where the edge of the blade catches on your figure print ridges when you try to pull your finger across it to test the sharpness. You don't know sharp until you've see these blades. Please don't cut yourself now trying to figure out if your own kitchen knife is sharp or not.
Anyway- that is the end of my long ass break, but just wanted to share:
-I was the only non-Japanese in the place besides the dishwasher
-I can read hiragana and could take orders in Japanese
-the waitress were cute and hot
-I got wasted with them every night during the summer
-had a threesome with a couple different groups of them... kidding ^^
-it was a fucking tough but fulfilling job
-I think from that experience I have always been meticulous about quality and presentation when it was necessary. Sushi is a very much a high pressured technical and artistic performance...
