Cooking Sushi Rice in your home

Cooking sushi rice in your home is easy. I will write 2 different ways of How to make Sushi rice.
People may think Sushi is Japanese food with raw fish. It is not!
Sushi is Su (vinegar) and Rice
together, it is called Su-meshi (rice) and you arranged with some other ingredients and it become sushi.
So we have many varieties of sushi.  Now you can cook sushi rice and make sushi in your own home!

This is from Wikipedia sushi page and Sumeshi section: Sushi is made with white, short-grained, Japanese rice mixed with a dressing made of rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and occasionally kombu and sake. It has to be cooled to room temperature before being used for a filling in a sushi or else it will get too sticky while being seasoned. Traditionally, the mixing is done with a hanger, which is a round, flat-bottom wooden tub or barrel, and a wooden paddle (shamoji).

Sushi rice (sushi-meshi or su-meshi 酢飯) is prepared with short-grain Japanese rice, which has a consistency that differs from long-grain strains such as those from India, Thailand, and Vietnam. The essential quality is its stickiness or glutinousness. Rice that is too sticky has a mushy texture; if not sticky enough, it feels dry. Freshly harvested rice (shinmai) typically contains too much water, and requires extra time to drain the rice cooker after washing. In some fusion cuisine restaurants, short grain brown rice and wild rice are also used. – If you want to read more, go to Wikipedia page.

First of all, when you make sushi, you need su-meshi (vinegar-rice). That is the basic for sushi.
so I will teach you how to make su-meshi the sushi rice.

There are 2 ways: instant version and long version.
You can choose whichever you like and make sushi rice and make sushi!
You have to master it, and then you can make sushi (next step).

This is the easiest one – instant version.
You can read my How to cook Japanese Rice page and cook Japanese rice first.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/rMOMur6E8lM[/youtube]

You can cook Japanese rice the regular way, and you buy the “Sushi no ko” the powder vinegar package to make sushi rice. You need to simply mix with regular rice and make sushi rice.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/TzS6IugZSi4[/youtube]

[youtube]https://youtu.be/RlQ7pyG6_sY[/youtube]

⬆️　watch this video ⬆️

However, how to mix the rice is a bit tricky. You don’t mix rice like you mix dough. You don’t want to smash the individual rice like paste. You will destroy the rice taste and can not make good sushi rice. Mix rice by cutting across it in a slashing motion, and then cool it by fanning.

The second row of pictures, you put the spatula in the middle far from you.

First, you move the spatula pulling toward you and flip the rice over to the left side.
Next, go in the opposite direction Scoop rice left bottom and flip over to the right side.
This will mix the vinegar and rice together without squishing the rice.

This is the picture of my rice cooker.
The left bar said regular rice, if you major 3.5 cups of rice (1 cup is 180cc, not 250cc like American standard), you put the water up to the left bar to the 3.5 line.

The second left is sushi rice bar. If you want to make sushi rice, do the same 3.5cups of rice and you put water until that line. Now you see for the same cups of rice the water is less than regular rice. Sushi rice use less water to cook it. Why is this? Because, you have to add vinegar and sugar after you cook sushi rice. So if you cook with regular water, the sushi rice is too watery.

Ingredients

2cup (360cc, 360g)                     Rice
560cc (19oz)                                Water
1 inch square                                Konbu

Sushi su (Sushi vinegar)
4tbs                                                Rice vinegar
3tbs                                               Sugar
1/2tsp                                            Salt

Instruction

You prepare to cook the rice – read how to cook Japanese rice page. When you cook the rice, put Konbu into the pot with the water and cook it.

It is better to have Konbu in the rice to cook with it but if you can not get it, it is OK. Cook the rice without Konbu.

When the rice is cooked, transfer the hot rice into the sushi-oke (picture above -wooden sushi bowl) or big bowl (if it is possible, put flat plate or bowl). Spread out the rice gently and cool down the rice a little. If you use sushi – oke, before you transfer the rice, you wet the oke with vinegar. You wet the cloth with vinegar and wipe the inside of the oke (bowl). I usually put vinegar in the oke and wet the oke and dump the vinegar out.

When the rice is not extremely hot, put mixed vinegar ingredients on the rice and mix it. When you put mixed vinegar ingredients (its call Sushi su – sushi vinegar) do not put directly onto the rice. Put spatula over the rice and put sushi su over the spatula.

Again, Mix the rice by cutting across it in a slashing motion, then cool it by fanning.