Eating sushi is an art. Do you really know how to taste them correctly?
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Published2 July 2022, 10:00
Swim the grains of rice in soy sauce, eat the ginger along with the maki and bite off half the nigiri? It’s time to read this article!
Some dishes should not only be prepared a certain way, but also eaten a certain way. The same goes for the Japanese dish that is sushi. Here are the most common mistakes when tasting sushi.
Mistake #1: Eating maki with chopsticks
The traditional way of eating sushi differs from our western way of consumption. In Japan, sushi is eaten by hand, especially maki sushi. However, sushi has also become a fast food dish in Japan, which has also brought about a change in the way it is consumed.
In Japan, sushi is eaten with the hands.
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Mistake #2: Putting ginger on sushi
Pickled ginger, called gari, is there to neutralize and aid digestion. Instead of eating it with the sushi, it should rather be eaten between the sushi in order to neutralize the taste of the different species of fish.
sushi guide
Hoso maki: the seaweed sheet (nori sheet) is cut in half and filled with one or two ingredients at most.
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Futo-Maki: makis are the most well-known form of sushi and translate to “rolled sushi”. Futo-Maki means “thick roll”, Hoso-Maki are the thin variant.
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Ura-Maki, California ou Inside-Out-Rolls: in this type of sushi, the ingredients are wrapped in the nori sheet, the rice is on the outside and is decorated with sesame or fish eggs.
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Mistake #3: Rubbing Chopsticks Against Each Other
The chopsticks should always be parallel to the edge of the table. Often, they have to be placed on a small support. Handle them with care: rubbing them against each other to remove wood remains means in Japan that the quality of the chopsticks is poor. You should also not pass the chopsticks to someone else, as it is a funeral rite in Japanese culture. It is preferable to place the sushi directly on the plate of his interlocutor.
Rubbing chopsticks against each other means they are of poor quality.
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Mistake #4: Dipping the rice from the nigiri
In the case of nigiri, only the fish is dipped in soy sauce, not the rice. This one is already seasoned, it doesn’t need soy sauce to taste better. The soaking also has the consequence that the assembly disintegrates. If you want to eat sushi properly, you have to drizzle the fish with soy sauce or lightly dip it in the sauce, then turn it so that the fish lands in your mouth before the rice.
The fish should be drizzled with soy sauce or lightly dipped, then turned so that the fish lands in the mouth before the rice.
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Mistake #5: Mixing soy sauce and wasabi
The large servings of soy sauce, wasabi and ginger that we serve with sushi at home would be enough for ten servings in Japan. Also, wasabi should not be mixed with soy sauce. In high-end sushi restaurants, the cook already seasons each sushi so that the customer does not need to add wasabi.
In restaurants, chefs brush the sushi with their own sauce mixture.
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Many sushi cooks and cooks also use their own sauce mixture made from soy sauce, mirin (sweet rice wine) and dashi (fish stock) and brush the fish with it. With good sushi, the sauce is used sparingly.