Trevor Corson's Arsenal for Making Sushi at Home

Rice

The word “sushi” doesn’t refer to raw fish, or to any of the toppings or fillings. It refers to the rice—seasoned with a carefully monitored mixture of rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. As I describe in The Story of Sushi, good sushi chefs often mix different varieties of rice like coffee roasters mixing varieties of bean, to achieve a unique blend. The most favored variety of rice for sushi is called Koshihikari; the starch in the core of the grain is more condensed than other varieties, giving it a firmer and denser texture. This rice also contains aromatic fatty acids that add flavor and moistness.

Trevor’s recommendation: When I make sushi at home I use a brand of Koshihikari called Tamaki; it’s grown in the Sacramento Valley in California to exacting Japanese standards. I use the “Haiga” version—it’s the same rice, just milled less intensively, so that the germ, or embryo, remains attached to the rice kernel. Most sushi chefs would not use “Haiga,” but I like it because it’s more nutritious and the attached germs add a little extra crunch. Some Asian food stores carry Tamaki Haiga; so do several online retailers.

Below are ingredients and items that I’ve tried at home in my kitchen and liked; a few of them are also mentioned in The Story of Sushi. I don’t include general instructions for making sushi here; those you can read about in The Story of Sushi or get from one of the many sushi-making manuals and cookbooks in existence. Here I provide tips that you’re unlikely to find anywhere else.

Note: I have no affiliation with any of the products or websites mentioned below, and I receive no endorsement compensation of any kind by mentioning them. Full disclosure: After I posted this page, Simply Natural Foods started selling my book.

Rice Vinegar

Put simply, rice vinegar is sake that has been left to ferment too long, so that it develops a tangy, acidic taste. Combined with sugar and a little salt, it is the key to what makes sushi so tasty. Sushi rice is, in essence, “sweet and sour” rice.

Trevor’s recommendation: I avoid the pre-mixed “seasoned rice vinegar” sold in most grocery stores—often under the brand name Marukan. I prefer to use plain, brown-rice vinegar. It’s more flavorful, and it allows me to mix my own ratio of sugar and salt so that I can make the sushi rice less sweet. Some of my favorite vinegar is Mitoku brown rice vinegar, fermented in earthenware crocks on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

The taste of this vinegar is so interesting that sometimes I just drink a spoonful straight from the bottle—as a healthful tonic. A good online retailer for purchasing this and some of the other condiments listed below is Simply Natural Foods.

Hangiri

Hangiri is the Japanese term for the type of cypress tub that sushi chefs use to mix their rice with the solution of vinegar, sugar, and salt that gives sushi its characteristic taste. I describe the mixing method in detail in The Story of Sushi.

Tip: You should pour a half-inch of water into the hangiri before use and let it soak, then discard the water; otherwise, the dry wood will absorb too much moisture from the rice.

Trevor’s recommendation: Small, relatively inexpensive hangiri for home use are available from a variety of online retailers. You’ll also want a wooden paddle for mixing called a shamoji.

Nikiri Sauce

One of the big surprises I relate in The Story of Sushi is that really serious sushi chefs don’t provide their customers with regular soy sauce, because the pungent flavor of straight soy sauce tends to overwhelm the delicate flavors of raw fish. Instead, they concoct their own “house” sauce called nikiri. It begins with regular soy sauce; then the chef adds a traditional broth called dashi, plus sake and a sweet rice cooking wine called mirin. The chef simmers this mixture briefly before serving. If you eat at a high-end sushi bar and the sauce in your soy-sauce dish is a translucent, light shade of brown, it’s probably nikiri. Pay attention to its complex, subtle taste. (For a great article about nikiri that I helped out with, click here.)

Trevor’s recommendation: If you’re feeling ambitious, you can make nikiri sauce at home. You’ll be astonished at how delicious it is. You’ll need five ingredients:

• soy sauce

• dried kelp (konbu)

• dried bonito fish flakes (hana-katsuo or katsuo-bushi)

• sweet rice wine for cooking (mirin)

• sake

I start with real soy sauce—not the stuff you get at the supermarket, which has been quickly manufactured in factories, but true soy sauce, that has been aged for two years and hasn’t been pasteurized. My favorite at the moment is Sakurazawa Yuuki Shoyu, sold by Mitoku; you can purchase it from Simply Natural Foods. The taste is richer and more layered than typical supermarket soy sauce. This soy sauce should be kept refrigerated.

Next I make dashi, a broth that is one of the pillars of Japanese cuisine; for example, it serves as the base for miso soup (see below). Any Japanese cookbook will include dashi-making instructions. Dashi starts with strips of dried kelp (called konbu), which you can purchase at many gourmet food stores and most Asian ones. I put the kelp in water over medium heat. Just before it boils I turn off the heat. (If it boils the broth will taste bitter.)

Then I sprinkle in dried bonito fish flakes called hana-katsuo or katsuo-bushi; they look like wood shavings. Gourmet and Asian food stores sell them. In The Story of Sushi I describe the extraordinary method by which these are made; it involves locking smoked tuna up in boxes until they’re covered with mold. After five minutes I strain out the kelp and fish flakes. The broth that’s left is dashi.

Another ingredient is mirin, a sweet rice cooking wine that is also a pillar of Japanese cooking. Mitoku sells a traditionally aged version that I like, also available from Simply Natural Foods.

In a pot, mix ten parts soy sauce, two parts dashi, one part mirin. Then throw in one part sake, and simmer the mixture briefly. You’ve made nikiri!

Wasabi

Another big surprise revealed in The Story of Sushi is that 99% of the so-called “wasabi” that sushi lovers encounter is not wasabi at all. Most of that green paste is made simply from ground-up horseradish, augmented by food coloring and other additives. Like regular soy sauce, horseradish simply overwhelms the delicate flavors of most raw fish.

Real wasabi is the grated rhizome of a rare plant that is difficult to grow, nearly impossible to keep fresh, and notoriously expensive.

However, it has a sweeter and subtler taste. Wasabi isn’t supposed to be all about spiciness.

Trevor’s recommendation: The fresh wasabi rhizome itself is hard to acquire and finicky to work with. But a company that I mention in The Story of Sushi called Pacific Farms, located on the Oregon coast, imports frozen wasabi rhizomes, grinds them up, and sells real wasabi paste, still frozen, in tubes.

Other Condiments

In addition to nikiri sauce, there are several exotic Japanese condiments that I like to include when making sushi. These condiments add flavors to the sushi experience that are unfamiliar to most Americans, and they’ll set your sushi apart.

Trevor’s recommendations:

• An alternative to nikiri sauce is ponzu sauce, a fantastically flavorful combination of soy sauce, the sweet rice wine mirin, brown-rice vinegar, kelp broth, and the Asian citrus fruit yuzu, which is a bit like a grapefruit but has its own unique taste.

Put a pinch of chopped chives atop a tuna nigiri and then drizzle on a few drops on ponzu; it’s divine. I buy Mitoku’s version of ponzu sauce, from Simply Natural Foods.

• Another condiment that involves the Asian citrus fruit yuzu is yuzu koshou. It’s a greenish mash of yuzu and hot pepper, and is only available from Asian food suppliers; it’s often labeled in English as “citrus puree.” On sushi it should be used sparingly. Instead of wasabi, a tiny dollop of yuzu koshou atop a whitefish nigiri makes for an unusual but heavenly combination of flavors.

• Pickled plums—umeboshi—are exceedingly popular in Japan. When you’re making sushi rolls, a fun alternative to tuna, cucumber, or avocado for the roll’s filling is umeboshi paste. A little will go a long way; it’s a sour taste but wonderfully pungent. For Americans who love sweetness, it may take some getting used to, but in moderation it will bring a refreshing zing to your sushi.

Nori

In The Story of Sushi I describe the surprising life cycle of nori, which is actually a type of algae, as well as the elaborate process of manufacturing it into paper-like sheets.

Trevor’s recommendation: Toasted nori sheets are now readily available in many food stores, and most brands are fine for general use. That said, most of the nori in circulation today is grown in China and Korea, and purists still think that the best nori is grown in Japan. If you want the cream of the crop, look for nori labeled “Ariake,” which is the premier nori-growing region in Japan. It’s pricey.

Bonus: Miso Soup

In The Story of Sushi I describe how soy sauce was invented as a by-product of making miso, in which soy beans and rice are fermented to create Buddhist vegetarian food as flavorful as meat. If you’ve gone to the trouble of making the kelp and fish-flake broth dashi, as I’ve described above, then by all means treat yourself to some real miso soup.

Trevor’s recommendation: Real miso soup starts with a pot of dashi. Heat it on low so that it starts to steam, but never let it boil. Stir in miso to taste; I always use miso made by the South River Miso Company in rural Massachusetts, where a small group of Americans are making miso by hand using ancient techniques that have become rare even in Japan. As far as I’m concerned, it is some of the best miso on the planet. Try the brown rice version that’s been aged three years!

Then you can add whatever you want to the soup, just don’t let it boil: tofu, vegetables, and seaweed are the usual ingredients. You can even ignore tradition and toss in strips of prosciutto—talk about tasty! As you’ll learn in The Story of Sushi, cured ham and miso are both rich in the flavor component glutamate, which creates the delicious taste the Japanese refer to as umami.