Okay, so I probably can’t make sushi as well as a professional, but compared to what’s on offer here in Dayton, I can make a damn good attempt.
The trouble with sushi here is multi-fold, and it’s hard to discern the misinformation surrounding a cultural food that isn’t my own. Here are some of the contradictory bits:
Sushi needs fresh fish
Fresh fish doesn’t have any taste
Fresh fish can give you parasites
Freezing the fish will kill the parasites
Freezing the fish destroys its subtleties
Freezing the fish enhances texture
Bluefin tuna is the best
Tuna is one of the blander fish for sushi
It’s all in the rice
If it’s all in the rice, why is sashimi so popular?
Nori adds the flavor
If nori adds the flavor, why are California rolls so popular?
California rolls still have nori
Not always
Cooked fish has more and complex flavor
Cooked fish overwhelms the subtleties of the total flavor package
Says who?
And on and on…
The real problem, I think, isn’t so much that we’re landlocked (if you don’t count access via the Mississippi/Ohio/Miami rivers), but that we’re part of the Midwest. And while Midwesterners certainly know how to fry their freshwater fish, they seem confused with the concepts of seafood. And exotic spice in general. So while the local sushi chefs could probably turn out more flavorful rolls, they don’t because there’s no demand. And they can get away with it.
So with the bar set so low, and prices set so insanely high, we had always considered making our own. And finally, we made the attempt.
First off, the rolling mat. I was not interested in hand-scrubbing a porous bamboo traditional version, so I picked up this silicon one.
Then the fish. Tuna is standard, so that was the choice for our first attempt. I froze it in my blast freezer for a day (USDA says 15 hours at -31F is the minimum requirement to kill parasites).
Followed by a proper workstation setup. The rice was cooked with 1T sugar, 2T rice vinegar, and 2T sugar, according to Alton Brown’s recipe.
And some sliced cucumber and cream cheese. The dog cookies were not included.
Some careful placement and rolling.
And voila! Okay, so it took a few attempts, but this was my best one.
The taste? Pretty close to those store packages. I think there’s some opportunity to get more flavor into the rice, and I can certainly experiment with adjusted levels of (actually good) soy sauce, instead of the dyed salt water restaurants like to give out.
In conclusion, yes we can make something comparable to Dayton-quality sushi rolls (or makizushi, specifically, before the pedants call me out). And I could probably tweak things to make it better. The real cost though is in prep and labor. The execution was a pain. We’ll probably try it again sometime, but I’m not in any rush. Bland sushi it is for the foreseeable future.
–Simon