Sushi Rice
16 September 2008
The right way of preparing rice is the very basis of good sushi. Trained sushi chefs are said to practice rice cooking for a year before they may even touch a fish. The perfect rice vinegar mixture, of course, remains each chef's secret, and sushi lovers often purposely pick sushi with mildly-flavoured toppings first so they can better savour (and judge) the quality of the rice.
This is just one of hundreds of versions of sushi rice, based on my own trials until finding the proportion of rice, vinegar, salt and sugar I personally prefer. As a special feature, I sometimes add black sesame seeds to the mixture, but this is of course optional.
I really like the taste of sushi rice, and I often add the vinegar mixture even if I use the rice just as a side dish. I also enjoy eating it just on its own, particularly when I have added the sesame seeds.
How To Do It
| for 16-20 nigiri or battleship sushi |
| 200g uncooked Japanese round-grain rice (= 1 unit) |
| 1 ¼ units of water |
| ¼ unit of Japanese rice vinegar |
| 3 teaspoons of fine white sugar |
| 1 teaspoon of table salt |
First, wash the rice. A convenient method is to pour the rice into a sieve and place the latter into a similarly shaped bowl. Fill the bowl with water and stir the rice with your fingers until the water gets milky. Lift the sieve out of the bowl, dispose of the water and repeat several times until the water remains transparent. If done thoroughly, the sushi rice will get nice and glossy when cooked.
After washing, let the rice dry for about 30 minutes or so, then cook it in water (measured in the same cup, the amount of water should be 1 ¼ the amount of rice). It is of course most convenient to use a rice cooker, which stops automatically once the water has been used up and the rice is done. If you don’t have such a device, cook the rice in a sauce pan at moderate heat, ideally using a transparent lid so you don’t need to lift it during the cooking process (it is important that the steam does not escape).
Meanwhile prepare the vinegar mixture by thoroughly stirring the Japanese rice vinegar, the sugar and the salt until the latter two have dissolved entirely. To speed the process up you can also slightly heat the mixture.
Once the rice is done, let it rest for a few minutes, then spread it out in a bowl or tray, preferably flat-bottomed. Sprinkle the vinegar mixture over the rice and mix the two by ploughing through the rice in vertical and horizontal lines with a flat, round-edged spoon, as if you were drawing a grid. There are special spoons for this, but any spatula-like tool will do - just make sure not to use anything too sharp-edged, so the rice grains do not get mashed. Repeat until the rice has cooled down to luke-warm temperature - you will see that the rice gets stickier and stickier during this process, up to the point where it can perfectly be shaped for sushi.
Before you further handle the rice, prepare a bowl of water mixed with a dash of rice vinegar. Use the mixture to moist your hands before you touch the rice - otherwise it will hopelessly stick to your fingers, making it impossible to get it into any shape!
