Imagine you are out to eat some sushi or sashimi at your favorite sushi joint. Just before your plate arrives, what do you do? Take your chopsticks out and rub them together? Hopefully not, or at least not out in the open, as that’s pretty disrespectful in just about every Asian culture. What about your soy sauce dish? Do you put a little soy sauce in it and add a good amount of wasabi as well, being sure to dissolve all the little chunks? It’s a pretty common practice actually, and many well-traveled individuals will find that some Japanese people also do it. But if you are going for a “Downton Abbey”-level of class when you eat sushi, you’ll find that mixing your wasabi and soy sauce is not proper. We won’t tell you it’s wrong, but apparently it isn’t the right way either. So here’s why, according to RocketNews24, along with how you can eat your sushi and sashimi with class. 1. It destroys the taste of soy sauce. Okay, you won’t find gourmet soy sauce or ponzu at just any sushi joint in the U.S. where regular and reduced sodium Kikkoman reign supreme, but if you do find a legit joint (which will probably be impressively expensive), odds are the sushi chef there has hand-picked the soy sauce they serve there.

A traditional and proud chef will add soy to your fish if needed, meaning that if you add more to the original mix of flavors, you are slapping the chef in the face and telling him you don’t think his mix of flavors is correct. Oh, are you also a master sushi chef that has devoted their entire life to this fine art? 2. It ruins the taste of wasabi. Again, we are only talking about those legit sushi restaurants where instead of using wasabi that comes from a powder or tube, the chef has hand-picked the wasabi stem and ground it fresh for you. Adding this wasabi, which took time and love to pick out, to soy sauce is another slap to the face. Especially when you sit at a sushi bar, that chef who has created edible art for you is always watching to see if you can even appreciate his work. 3. It’s not beautiful. Have you noticed how impeccable sushi and sashimi look? Are you aware that Japanese culture has one of the most elaborate and artful set of manners in the world?

Everything about sushi and eating it should be beautiful, so creating a mix of some sewage-colored solution in your soy sauce bowl is another no-no. Leave the dark brown soy sauce and the bright green wasabi separate, as it should be. We can’t lay down a bunch of rules on soy sauce and wasabi without mentioning the last most common item to the trinity — ginger. To set the record straight, David Gelb, the director of “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” and someone who knows a thing or two about sushi, told Bon Appetit: “One thing to never do: don’t put ginger on top of your sushi and don’t put ginger in your soy sauce either … If the sushi chef wants some ginger on the piece of sushi for balance, he will have put it on there himself.” The ginger is there as a palate cleanser, not a supplemental taste item. Cleanse your palate, don’t mix and match, and respect the art. If you must add the taste of soy sauce and wasabi to your rolls or sashimi, the proper way is quite simple.

Place a small chunk of wasabi on one side, dip the other side in soy sauce, and prepare your mouth for the proper trifecta of flavors. sushi delivery london east If you are ever headed to a traditional sushi restaurant here in the U.S. or all the way to Japan, you should watch this video. where to buy sushi equipmentLegendary sushi chef Naomichi Yasuda shows you how to eat sushi the proper way.cooking sushi rice water ratio RocketNews24 also included a helpful tip for the proper order to eat your sashimi — lightest to darkest. buy japanese akita londonYou see, darker meat is assumed to have a stronger taste, so if you start with the lighter colored fish, the tastes of the different fish won’t overlap or over-power each other.how to order sushi like a ceo

So the next time you are out to a nice sushi restaurant, show appreciation for the fine work of the chef who made you your delicious meal (because sushi chefs are sensitive artists), unless you want be to end up like this girl and be ridiculed by your country in the internet.sushi new york grand centralHow to eat sushiChat with us in Facebook Messenger. sushi pack online gamesFind out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.Story highlightsThe best technique is to turn the sushi upside down to prevent rice from soaking up too much soy sauceTop sushi masters season each piece of sushi with soy sauce and seasoning, accompanied by a frown if you ask for more sauceJapan's best sushi-ya have no menu, just a fantastic parade of what's best on the dayMORE: The best sushi restaurants in TokyoHow to eat sushi

: Hands-onHow to eat sushi: Oshibori, gari, wasabiMORE: Tokyo the best city for food: MichelinHow to eat sushi: ChopsticksMORE: World's 50 most delicious foodsHow to eat sushi: OrderingMORE: Sydney's 'sushi nazi'How to eat sushi: Agari teaTrevor Corson, author of The Story of Sushi, explains why you should eat nigiri with your fingers, why you should ignore the extra wasabi and how to get sushi chefs to give you the best fish. Pati Jinich: You can get a tray of sushi in a gas station these days just as you would a box of donuts. Why has sushi gone so mainstream? Trevor Corson: This is the hilarious mystery of how this insanely exotic meal of raw fish has become as common as McDonald's in the U.S. It's really an all-American meal now. It just seems to have happened with no one noticing. Part of it is that starting even in the late 70s, people's awareness of the healthfulness of the food they were eating became more pronounced. Fish and grains were even recommended in 1977, and that was about the same time sushi entered into our American palate.

But the sad thing is that our sushi has become this mix of stuff where we put in spicy chili pepper, mayonnaise, extra wasabi and all these other things that prevent you actually from tasting the fish. It's a bit ironic and a bit of a shame that we're eating so much fish, and yet we're not really paying any attention anymore to the taste of the fish. It’s more about that melts-in-your-mouth succulence and all the sauces and everything. I encourage people to try more traditional sushi just so they can taste the fish again. PJ: I haven't seen many sushi chefs who are women behind the counter. TC: It goes back to the patriarchy that is so persistent in Japanese society. It's really hard for women to enter the sushi profession in Japan. There are all these ridiculously stupid reasons that are given like their hands are too hot and they are going to cook the fish. PJ: Aren't women's hands actually colder? At least mine are cold. TC: I found this scientific study that proved that men's hands are warmer.

It's very challenging for women, but I think they have a better chance outside of Japan right now than they do in Japan. But that may change -- let's hope so. PJ: I'm one of those people who has never mastered chopsticks -- I just don't have the patience. I always eat sushi with my fingers. TC: You are so much in luck because the best way I think to eat sushi is with your fingers, and there's actually a very specific reason for that. When you sit at the sushi bar and the chef makes you what's called a nigiri -- that's the little finger of rice with a slice of something on top, the traditional form -- it is meant to be actually quite loose, not packed too tightly. They fall apart in your mouth that way. Chefs go through years of training to achieve the perfect amount of pressure with their fingers when they squeeze it -- just enough so the perimeter of the rice grains sticks together, but the inside of the rice pack is still loose and airy. You want that to be loose and airy so when you put it in your mouth, the rice grains fall apart and mingle with the fish on your tongue.

Most sushi diners in the U.S. have never experienced a properly made nigiri because we all think we're supposed to use chopsticks. The chefs are all packing the sushi much too tightly so it won't fall apart when we try to pick it up with chopsticks. PJ: What are we supposed to do with wasabi? Are we supposed to mix it with the soy sauce, use it whenever we feel like it? TC: Here is the cruel truth: We're always served extra wasabi on the side -- even at the lower-end sushi restaurants in Japan, this is the case -- but it's not supposed to be there. After I have gotten to know sushi chefs and chatted with them in Japanese, they finally loosen up and tell me the truth. When they see us mixing extra wasabi into our soy sauce, they stop giving us their best fish, because we're not going to be able to taste the difference with all the spiciness in there. They're going to save the best fish for somebody else. A good sushi chef is actually putting a little bit of wasabi into the piece of sushi when he makes it.

He's actually calibrating the amount of wasabi to that particular fish. There shouldn't be any more or any less -- any more is usually going to overwhelm the very delicate flavors of some of these fish. My recommendation is sit at the bar, tell the chef that you're not going to add extra wasabi and could he please season the sushi for you the way he wants and you'll just eat it like that. A good chef will paint a little sheen of sauce with a brush across the top of the piece of sushi and maybe add a little garnish and give it to you. You don't have to do anything else to it. That's the ideal way to eat sushi, just put it right in your mouth. PJ: I've seen sushi chefs brush that magic sauce on top of sushi. What is in that sauce? TC: Here's another thing we don't know: Straight soy sauce is really too strong of a flavor for most of the delicate fish in sushi. Any sushi chef who is good is making their own house-brewed sauce. It's called nikiri and it is a proprietary mix of soy sauce but also a few other things: usually some dashi broth, which is made from simmered kelp and fish flakes, maybe some sake, maybe a secret ingredient.