How to cook sushi rice.

There are two difficulties in making a good sushi: Chosing and cutting the fish and cooking the rice. I talked about cutting the fish in an earlier post. Today I will talk about preparing the rice.



The rice that is good for making sushi is a short-grain rice. In many shops selling Japanese or Asian food, you can find the packs of rice titled "sushi rice". I suggest you to use those. However, if it is hard to find you can use "Baldo" type rice of any brand. In Turkey, I have seen that "Osmancik" rice does the job even better. Please do not try use "Jasmin" type or any other long-grain rice with the confusion of sushi rice with other asian food.

Ingredients:

- 1 kg rice
- 150 ml rice vinegar
- 250 ml mirin (alternatively you can use sweet white wine and a spoon of sugar)

Method:

Washing:
0) Measure the rice. 1 kg is around 1200ml.
1) Wash the rice with cold water and wash the rice again, and again in a deep bowl.
2) Do it around 5-6 times until the water you wash it does not get white anymore.
3) After every wash, strain the rice.
4) Finally, fill the bowl with water and let the rice rest there for 45minutes.
5) Strain, and it is ready to be cooked.

Cooking:
6) Put the rice in a deep soucepan. Teflon is better.
7) Pour the same amount of cold water you measured in step0. (1200ml)
8) Cover the pan, cook slowly on small fire until the rice takes in all the water.

Cooling and souce:
9) Mix the rice vinegar and mirin in a shaker.
9) Put the rice in a flat container. An oven tray will work fine.
10) With a wooden paddle, mix the rice. Pour in the souce slowly while mixing.
11) Do not smash the rice.
12) Cover the tray with a clean humid cloth.

Tips:
- The rice should be cool before preparing the sushi, otherwise the fish will cook in it.
- You can insert a chopsick into the soucepan to see if all water is gone and the rice is cooked well.
- When you handle the cooked rice, it is good to mix some rice vingegar with water in a bowl and wet your hands with it (will keep your hands clean so rice won't stick).

I will write about different types of sushi and sashimi here later. Keep following ;)