For those of you who haven’t tried cooking sushi at home on NYC - do it! It is amazing how easy it is to get results that beat the pants out of 90% of the restaurants (pretty much any joint that doesn’t offer an omakase option) just by getting good ingredients and cooking at home.
It’s my fourth time cooking it and my result are already WAY better than anything we can get on seamless. Here’s what I’ve learned so far - keep in mind I am doing this in a sort of cutting corners, Sunday supper way, so this is not how to become a skilled chef, but how to produce delicious food with a minimum of fuss.
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buy a fuzzy logic rice cooker. Not necessary but makes it so much easier. Since we got one (my wife wanted so that she could make dinner for herself on weeknights) we use it for everything - both long grain and short grain rice. What a great invention.
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use pre seasoned rice vinegar - making it yourself makes your whole apartment smell like vinegar and kombu. But the Japanese groceries, even the small ones in the city, all carry a Japanese brand that’s seasoned with real sugar and kombu, rather than HFCS and MSG. The Japanese brand is a touch sweet for my taste but that’s easier addressed with a splash of salted plain rice vinegar - the US-produced brands are unusuable.
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go to a Japanese grocery and buy the more expensive versions of everything. nori and rice quality make a huge difference; it’s worth the incremental cost (even the more expensive stuff isn’t that expensive, though I’m sure we don’t get the best here)
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chirashi is laughably easy to prepare and delicious; but maki not hard at all, especially at home if your family is willing to tolerate a couple of awkward looking rolls. Still tastes fabulous, and homemade maki, with its crunchy nori and properly-textured rice, is infinitely better than what you can order in. Nigiri is not as easy just because you have to make so many pieces.
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one time I forgot wasabi and I substituted a touch of Passover white horseradish under the fish for the nigiri and no one noticed the difference. That being said I’ve been getting and grating real fresh wasabi bc I think it matters. Same with getting nice soy sauce, good shoyu is so much better than kikkoman. A tiny touch is an amazing flavor enhancer, you don’t even notice it’s there except everything tastes better.
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my non-sushi kitchen knife-a decent German knife I keep carefully sharpened-is adequate for 90% of what I want to do. I’m sure a specialized sushi knife might work better but it is far from essential. The rice cooker is way more helpful than dropping $150 on a new knife.
I’m sure there are veterans and skilled sushi chefs who will over better tips or different approaches, but all I am saying is that I am not a particularly nimble-fingered guy and my kitchen is the size of a thimble and the stuff I produced made everyone really happy. Rare that I get those kinds of reactions from the waiting crowd.