Only use sushi-grade fish for sushi. Eating cooked fish is safer than eating raw fish. However, some people like to eat raw fish, which requires purchasing the right types, as some fish are not suitable for eating raw. Proper food-safety precautions also need to be taken to minimize the risk of food-borne illnesses from eating raw fish. Types of Fish Seafood commonly used in raw preparations like sushi include sea bass, tuna, mackerel, blue marlin, swordfish, yellowtail, salmon, trout, eel, abalone, squid, clams, ark shell, sweetfish, scallop, sea bream, halfbeak, shrimp, flatfish, cockle, octopus and crab. Certain types of tuna, including yellowfin, southern bluefin, northern bluefin, Thunnus alalunga, Thunnus atlanticus and Thunnus obesus are particularly good for serving in raw form because they are less likely to cause food-borne illnesses and don't need to be frozen first. Buying Fish When buying fish to serve raw, purchase fish that are labeled sushi-grade, as this type has been pretreated in such a way as to limit the risk of food-borne illnesses.

This involves freezing the fish for a certain time at very low temperatures that you cannot achieve with a home freezer. Health regulations stipulate that seafood that is going to be served raw must first be frozen in this manner, except for certain types of tuna, so any sushi you purchase at restaurants has been previously frozen. Don't purchase frozen fish in packages that are damaged, that contain ice crystals or frost on the packages or that are stored above the frost line of the freezer. Mercury Levels Blue marlin, mackerel, sea bass, swordfish, tuna and yellowtail are high in mercury, so limit your consumption of these high-mercury raw fish, since mercury in high amounts can affect your nervous system function. King mackerel and swordfish are among the types of seafood with the highest levels of mercury, so you may want to avoid consuming them. Food Safety Non-sushi grade fish may contain high levels of parasites that could cause food-borne illnesses, including listeria, salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

Even sushi-grade fish may contain some amount of these parasites, especially if it isn't kept refrigerated below 41 degrees Fahrenheit or frozen until you are ready to use it to keep these parasites from multiplying. Thaw frozen fish in the fridge and keep it refrigerated until you serve it, as thawing it on the countertop increases the risk of food-borne illnesses. 5 SoCal Fish Markets Where You Can Find Your Favorite Catch | sushi in dublin 4 Title5 SoCal Fish Markets Where You Can Find Your Favorite Catchsushi without rice wine vinegar This KCET story is viewer-supported. jiro dreams of sushi where is the restaurantBefore he became the proprietor of the popular Williamsburg restaurant Okonomi, the chef Yuji Haraguchi worked for nearly a decade in the Japanese wholesale seafood industry, moving fish from Japan to high-end sushi restaurants, primarily in New York and Boston. sun sushi menu st john's nl

It was in that job that he first noticed a paradox in the American market for sushi-grade fish: the freshest seafood was the stuff living in domestic waters, the striped bass and mackerel, fluke and flounder that could be caught in the Atlantic and consumed far more efficiently than anything he imported from Tokyo, which travelled thousands of miles before reaching diners’ plates. But the vast majority of Japanese restaurants relied on imported seafood, in part because they could trust Japanese fishmongers to handle their catch carefully, preventing the kind of bruised or nicked flesh that is a deal breaker for chefs preparing fish raw. sushi bento box lunchHaraguchi recalls once visiting the commercial fish pier in Boston to see if any of the day’s catch was suitable for his high-end sashimi-restaurant clients. buy sushi rice online canada

He found fish that was “gorgeous” and as fresh as can be, but, as he put it to me recently, “the fishermen were standing on top of the fish!” Witnessing this gap between the quality and potential of U.S.-caught fish, on the one hand, and the fastidiousness of Japanese handling practices, on the other, gave Haraguchi the seeds of an idea for a new kind of fish market, one that would import only the Japanese methods, while relying on seafood caught domestically. sushi order online vancouverThis August, he opened such a shop, Osakana, a tiny establishment located just a few blocks away from Okonomi, where he has long been serving East Coast seafood specialties, from Maine-sourced uni to line-caught ocean bluefish. (Becky Cooper recently wrote about the restaurant, which on weeknights becomes Yuji Ramen, for Tables for Two.) The store, which was funded through a Kickstarter campaign in July, follows in the footsteps of other New York businesses like Mermaid’s Garden, Greenpoint Fish and Lobster Company, and Sea 2 Table as part of a micro movement to celebrate the region’s fish supply.

But Osakana is, as far as I know, the first such New York business to fuse a locavore seafood ethos with the techniques and philosophy of Japanese cooking. The store, which also offers classes in sushi making, knife skills, and fish-handling practices, defines itself as a “Japanese fish market and education center,” with a mission to “revive the city’s connection with its neighboring ocean.” Stepping into Haraguchi’s white-tiled shop, one can immediately see the difference between Osakana’s approach and that of a conventional American seafood store. Instead of a big, sloppy ice counter displaying several dozen varieties of fish, one is greeted by a single humidity-controlled display case lined with patterned tenugui cloth, with a small selection of whole and filleted species laid out neatly on mismatched ceramic plates. (Wet ice, Haraguchi believes, is a vector for the bacteria that can contaminate raw fish.) Haraguchi sources fish from the Japanese-owned Nishimaru fish company, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, working with the mongers there to insure that fish are well handled.

He favors buying whole fish over pre-portioned fillets. To insure that scales and flesh never touch, the shop uses two sets of cutting boards–one for breaking down the incoming whole animals, a second for fine slicing. The offerings change daily, in accordance with whatever is freshest. The sashimi-grade selections at Osakana, regardless of species, are priced at a flat—and steep—thirty dollars a pound. Sourcing whatever is available locally, and at peak freshness, means departing from the bread-and-butter selection of salmon, shrimp, and tuna that dominates both American seafood shops and sushi restaurants. Osakana does procure small amounts of wild-caught tuna and Alaskan sockeye salmon, but on my first visit to the shop I was surprised to see, front and center, a humble porgy—a silvery, plate-sized fish that lives in the waters of New York and New Jersey. The American porgy’s Japanese cousin, madai, is considered “the congratulations” fish, served at weddings and graduations and often priced at more than fifty dollars a pound.

But in the United States it typically sells for less than five dollars a pound, and is more likely to appear at Chinatown holes-in-the-wall than at fine-dining establishments. At Osakana, I watched Haraguchi’s manager and fish cutter, Luke Davin, gingerly slice a skin-on fillet that had been treated with the yubiki method—a spritz of scalding saltwater to tighten and sterilize the skin. Also available that day was engawa, a cut of summer flounder taken from the fringes of the fillet, and presented in Osakana’s display case in clean, tight coils. Engawa, too, is a delicacy in Japan, sometimes more esteemed than bluefin toro. In America, the only time I’ve come across it was out fishing on New York sport-fishing boats, where it’s typically sliced off and used for bait. On those same boats, I have seen many a dogfish shark bludgeoned and tossed into the sea, dead. Osakana offers that same dogfish, marinated in one of Haraguchi’s sauces, for twenty dollars a pound. At Osakana, like at Okonomi, Haraguchi is guided by the Japanese virtue of mottainai, or aversion to waste.

By buying less than thirty pounds of fish a day, he is able to get around the U.S.D.A.’s “First In First Out” rule, which mandates that all food stores sell their oldest products first. His goal is to move the entirety of each morning’s purchases the same day. (Fish bones are boiled down into ramen stock, which customers can purchase in the store, or learn how to make in the shop’s ramen classes.) This is a kind of thrift and transparency that the average American seafood consumer has mostly learned to live without. As I have written in my book “American Catch,” even outside of the sushi-restaurant supply chain, the vast majority of fish eaten in the U.S. is imported, often from farms in Asia. The organization Oceana has found that around a third of seafood sold in the U.S. is mislabelled, an alarming figure that indicates just how detached Americans have become from the seafood on their plates. With Osakana, Haraguchi has carved out a small space for himself outside the system.