Sushi Rice / Sushi-meshi [The Basic For Sushi]


Sushi rice or vinegar-ed rice in English, 寿司飯 (read as sushi-meshi) or 舎利/シャリ (read as Shari) in Japanese, whatever you call it, they are all referring to the same thing - the basic ingredient for all kind of sushi. The taste of sushi-meshi is vary among sushi chefs in term of sweetness and sourness. Hence, feel free to adjust the amount of the sugar and vinegar, or the vinegar dressing, according to your taste.

In this post, I have also included "recipe" for hand-vinegar at the end of the post. Do remember to prepare one before starting getting your hands-on the roll. For preparing sushi rice, please spend few minutes take note of the following important points:
  • It is mentioned in Japanese Home Cooks that rice for cooking sushi rice should be soaked before cooking. In addition to it, as the kitchen gadgets getting more advance, if an IH pressure rice cooker is used and normal rice cooking function is selected, rice can be cooked without soaking in advance.
  • If using premixed sushi vinegar (寿司醋) [Sushi vinegar and rice vinegar are two different things], it can be used straight away from the bottle without adding sugar or salt unless sweeter or saltier sushi-meshi is preferred.
  • If using a wooden mixing bowl or barrel (known as hangiri/handai in Japanese), wet the bowl/barrel with water then pat-dry using a clean kitchen towel. This is to prevent the wooden bowl/barrel from absorbing sushi vinegar when preparing sushi rice.

3 rice cups uncooked short-grain rice / Japanese rice
70 ml rice vinegar / 白米醋
3 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt

  1. Rinse rice until water is clear, put rice into rice cooker pot and fill with water up to mark "3". Soak rice for at least 2 hours then cook as usual.
  2. For the seasoning, combine all seasoning ingredients in a bowl and stir till sugar is dissolved. Set aside.
  3. Transfer cooked rice into a wooden or non-metal bowl, add in seasoning gradually while the rice still hot and mix well. After mixing fan a little to cool the rice down rapidly to the body temperature (I used "room temperature" for the recipe to be publish in Malaysia) then cover it with a clean damp towel. Sushi rice is ready.

For shaping the sushi, hand-vinegar (手醋 or te-zu in Japanese) is used to prevent sushi rice from sticking on the hands. Dip fingers in the hand-vinegar, shake gently to remove excess solution then rub each palm with fingers.

In a bowl, mix together 1 part of rice vinegar with 2 parts of water. Ready to use.

Stay-tuned for sushi recipes or click the label "sushi" for existing sushi recipes on the blog.

Comments :

3 comments to “Sushi Rice / Sushi-meshi [The Basic For Sushi]”
Elena said...

I found difficult to cook sushi, but for you, it seems an art...

Epilicious said...

Thank you for sharing. I really like your blog.

Lydia said...

Hi Elena and Epilicious,

Greeting from Japan, thank you for the compliments.

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