2025 cheat sheet

Thanks so much for coming to class! Here's your cheat sheet:

Sushi Rice

Buy a rice cooker. Our fav is on your shopping list (link below)
Buy sushi rice. Nishiki and Botan are the two most popular brands found at the grocery store. Asian grocers usually only carry bags that are 5# or more.
Make 1 cup of rice per person; this will ensure at least two big rolls per person.
Wash the rice before you cook it by swirling it around in water. I usually do this 3 times for 30 seconds each (using fresh water each time). Drain the rice well, put it in the rice cooker and follow the manufacturers instructions to cook the rice. Check out the strainer on the shopping list; it makes this job really easy
When the rice is done, remove it to a larger container, like a cutting board, platter or large roasting pan. Cut the rice with your rice paddle that came with the cooker, while adding SEASONED rice wine vinegar to the rice. Seasoned means it has salt & sugar added to it & this can be bought ready-made at any grocery store. Use the 8 cups rice to 1/2 cup seasoned vinegar ratio.
Spread the rice out to allow it to cool quickly. We're only looking to cool rice down enough to be able to hold it comfortably. If it is too hot, the rolls will not hold together; the steam in the rice will cause it not to stick. Warm rice is the best for sushi rolls, but room temperature is suitable.
Rice has a 4 hour shelf life once you add the vinegar. Store the rice in the rice cooker and keep the lid closed to maintain some of the warmth
DO NOT REFRIGERATE THE RICE

Sushi Sauces

Spicy Mayo Use any mayo and any sriracha, in quantities that make you happy. Mild or spicy; it's totally up to you. You can add any number of things to your mayo to make it taste great to you, but I personally use a 3:1 ratio of mayo to sriracha plus a healthy sprinkle of togarashi and hot chili oil.

Sriracha: Don't get hung up on Huy Fong Sriracha. There are dozens of brands, and a few that I prefer over the original. My students all-time favorite sriracha brand is Three Mountains yellow chili sriracha, which can be hard to locate, but can be found on our shopping list (as can every ingredient we've talked about)

Sweet Chili Sauce: I prefer Mae Ploy brand, but everybody makes it these days. It's inexpensive, made from fruit juice and chili's and is delicious on a number of things; not just sushi rolls. Mix it with Spicy mayo to make your own BangBang sauce. Speaking of Bang Bang sauce, you can make it at ChickFilA by mixing their "sweet and spicy sriracha" sauce with a packet of mayo. Ask them for nuggets/fries and an empty salad bowl & lid and shake it all up!

Eel or Unagi Sauce: basically this sauce is half soy/half sugar, cooked down and reduced to thicken. It's a pain to make because anytime you're cooking with sugar, you run the risk of burning it, so I prefer to buy it. Kikkoman unagi sauce is the best (IMO) and can be found at Asian grocers and on Amazon. You can also buy 5# handles of it at Restaurant Depot for $14ish. Bonus: you can make gluten free eel sauce by using GF soy sauce + sugar and making your own

Serving Raw Fish at Home:

Buy your fish out of the freezer at either the local Asian grocery store or at Restaurant Depot, if there's one in your area. Sometimes you can find a Chef'Store, which is basically a US Foods that is open to the public & this is a must stop if you can find one! RD has amazing prices, but the supply can often be picked over because every sushi chef in town shops there (and my students as well). It is well worth a visit, however and you should take a coat and a warm hat even in the summer because the walk in refrigerator section has a lot of great things in it.

Sushi grade simply means the fish is frozen, but the quality can be different depending on where you shop. The tuna steaks at the grocery store are definitely not the same quality as the tuna at Restaurant Depot. They sell tuna loins, saku blocks (sometimes...these can be hard to source unless at an Asian grocer and can be quite expensive), ground tuna for spicy tuna and tuna cut into cubes for poke. The tuna steaks at Costco are really nice for making sushi rolls & they also sell "tempura shrimp" which are stretched out into a straight line & therefore fit beautifully inside a sushi roll. Trader Joe's usually has these "stretched" shrimp as well.

When at the Asian grocer, take a look around at everything, but especially the freezer section. Here you'll find hamachi, imitation crab (Osaki is the best brand), tuna, squid salad, seaweed salad, masago/tobiko, bbq eel and more.

Amazon shopping list:

https://sushi-class.myshopify.com/blogs/news/amazon-shopping-list

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