sushi rice to cook
Making great sushi starts with making great rice. Sometimes called Pearl rice, Glutinous rice or Japanese rice, Sushi rice is the most important ingredient in your sushi. Without well-cooked and well-dressed grains of rice, the best-laid sushi plans can turn into a disaster. It is essential that you use the correct variety of rice when making sushi to ensure that perfect consistency and adhesive quality so integral to good sushi. When the rice is of high caliber, the sushi will be too. Buy Sushi Rice here! Of some 40000 varieties of rice in the world, sushi rice is quite unique in its ability to bind together and form the backbone to various types of sushi. Understanding the many strains of rice can at first seem very daunting, but it helps to think of all rice in terms of size: long-grain, medium-grain and short-grain. All sushi rice is short grain white rice, but it comes in different qualities based on grain integrity. All rice is classed in categories according to grain size when stocked in supermarkets, but also by other factors such as color and fiber content.
Following the removal of the outer husk and the top ‘germ’ layer of the grain, rice becomes white.
sushi rice paper buyThe grains will then be polished before they are packaged and sold as white rice.
sushi san francisco brown riceBrown rice has had the husk removed but kept its germ: the nutrient-rich layer that white rice has had scrubbed off. Wild rice grains are kept in their entirety, with both the germ and the husk intact. Brown and Wild rice varieties have the most nutritional value in terms of vitamins and fiber, however white rice offers pure carbohydrates that are necessary for energy. The lack of fiber in sushi rice is compensated for by the Nori wrapping, thus making a single piece of sushi quite a well-balanced nutritional treat. The Japanese began cultivating rice sometime in the 3rd century BC.
The moist environment was favorable for the crops and very soon rice became the staple of the early Japanese diet. Fermented rice was used to preserve meat, fish and vegetables in what was the prototype for today’s sushi rolls: various vegetables and meats were stored in the center of a block of fermented rice. Rice fermentation evolved in itself, and eventually rice-vinegar was added to speed the long fermentation process. In the next two thousand years, the style of coupling rice with fish and other ingredients has become big business, finally appearing as the sushi we know and love today. Cooking any rice comes with an element of trepidation for most people, and that’s why I always recommend using an automatic rice cooker. Consistency is the name of the game. Depending on when the rice is harvested, there might be more or less moisture in the grains, and that will slightly affect your finished product. Don't feel bad if you get a bad batch of rice. You can learn from your mistake and add more or less water depending on your outcome.
Once you get a recipe that works, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about how the rice will turn out. High quality sushi rice will have very few (if any) broken rice grains, so avoid over-processing the rice. Broken grains lead to a "mushy sushi" that is very disappointing. The sticky consistency should NOT come from overcooked or overworked rice. The rice is sticky because of an indispensable starch content and the addition of a mixture of rice wine vinegar, sugar, and salt. Sushi rice recipes will not always work on the first try. If you are using a gas stove and someone else uses an electric rice cooker, there will be 2 different outcomes. Sushi rice recipes should be seen as a guide and adjustments will need to be made to fit your own circumstances.Since the "How to section an orange" post got such a warm reception, I thought I'll start a Technique of the Week column :) Based on the picture, you might think that I will tell you how to make sushi. That's a technique that I still need to work on myself.
But I can tell you how to make great sushi rice since it's something that I finally mastered.Although I am an avid fish cook, sushi is one of those dishes I preferred to leave to professionals. At least that was the case until this weekend. Memories of make-your-own-sushi parties, that were so popular with my college friends, still make me shudder. If you ever ate one of those dilapidated cucumber rolls made with mushy rice while pretending to have a good time, you know what I mean. What made me consider making my own sushi after all those years of bad memories was watching Japanese cooks select pieces of fish to serve raw at the New Deal Fish Market. I've been watching them with curiosity for months, and the nosy person that I am, I could never resist asking them questions about what fish to use and how to prepare it.It wasn't the fear of eating raw fish that was stopping me. Parasites in some of the salt water species are so rare, that it is safe to eat these fish raw as long as they are as fresh as New Deal sells them.
What I was worried about was not knowing how to properly cut the fish, make the rice, and put them together. But I guess there is the first time for everything, and I decided to give it a shot.Believe it or not, rice scared me more than the fish. I don't own a rice cooker and making a small quantity of rice in a pot always leaves me with a burnt bottom. My plan was to use Cook's Illustrated baking method. It simulates a rice cooker by surrounding the rice vessel with even indirect heat and works wonders on brown rice. My hope was that it would work for sushi rice too.While looking through at least 5 recipes for sushi rice on-line and in my cookbooks, I found out why the rice we made for sushi in college was so awful. First of all, we skipped the rinsing step. You have to rinse rice thoroughly before cooking it to get rid of extra starch. Second, we didn't let it rest after cooking. Third, we used seasoning from a package instead of making our own. And fourth, we didn't cover it with a damp towel to prevent it from drying out after it was done.
By following Cook's Illustrated baking method and Ming Tsai's recipe for seasoning I got really fantastic rice -- glossy, toothsome, and just barely sweet. Finally, I had rice that was worthy of New Deal's fish.It made all the difference! I decided to keep it simple and served most of the fish as sashimi (just sliced) or nigiri (sliced over a ball of rice). The most complicated thing that I attempted was spicy tuna rolls with crispy tempura bits. The verdict by Jason, the sushi snob, was that sushi is definitely worth making at home!How to make sushi riceMakes enough rice for 8 rolls2 cups short-grain Japanese sushi rice2 cups water1/2 cup rice wine vinegar2 Tbsp mirin (Japanese sweet sake)1/4 cup sugar2 tsp saltRice cooker method Place rice in a fine sieve and place the sieve in a bowl of water. Rinse thoroughly changing the water in the bowl at least 3 times until the water runs completely clean when you remove the sieve from the bowl. Place rice and water into the rice cooker, turn it on, and wait for rice to cook.
Proceed to the Finishing Rice section. Oven methodPreheat the oven to 375F.Place rice in a fine sieve and place the sieve in a bowl of water. Drain well and put into an 8x8 Pyrex dish. Bring 2 cups water to a boil.Pour boiling water over rice and cover the Pyrex dish tightly with foil. Place in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes. Proceed to the Finishing Rice section.bine the vinegar, mirin, sugar, and salt in a small non-reactive saucepan and set over medium heat until the mixture is hot and sugar dissolves. Do not allow it to boil. Invert rice into a large wooden bowl. If you don't have one, you can use a glass or stainless steel one, but wood works best.Fold half of the vinegar mixture into rice with a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon. Use a cutting and folding motion when stirring rice to avoid squashing the rice grains and releasing their starch. It should have a pleasantly sweet-acidic edge. If necessary, fold in more vinegar mixture.Wet a dish towel (or 2 layers of paper towel) and cover the rice.