Ingredients for sushi

Of course, if you are not going to cook sushiat home, this article may seem useless. However, many people prefer to know what they eat, especially if they have a tendency to food allergies. In addition, information on essential ingredients for sushi can help dispel many myths about this trendy dish.

So, the main ingredient for sushi is, of course, Fig. Not from any rice can you cook sushi and rolls. A special short-grain rice is used for making land. Its peculiarity is that it is very sticky - it helps to form sushi and rolls that do not fall apart. If you decide to cook sushi at home, but you do not have the opportunity to buy special Japanese rice, choose only short-grain rice.

To give a specific taste and the necessary stickiness, the cooked rice runs special sauce. Usually it consists of soy sauce, ricevinegar and sugar. In shops selling ingredients for sushi, you can often buy ready-made sauce, which you just need to add to the rice. If you want to prepare the sauce yourself, but do not find rice vinegar, you can replace it with apple sauce.

For the preparation of rolls, an ingredient is used for sushi as nori - Dried seaweed. Usually, nori are sold already pressed, in the form of thin square sheets. To make one roll you need half of this sheet. It is better to buy pre-fried nori, they are green. If you bought unroasted nori (black), you need to fry them on a grill or a large frying pan for a few seconds.

As fillings Such ingredients are mainly used forsushi, like fish, scrambled eggs, seafood, mushrooms and vegetables. It is a common misconception that only raw fish are used for sushi, in which there may be parasites. Firstly, in the raw form in the land, only ocean fish is put, river fish is always cooked, since the probability of having parasites in it is much greater. Secondly, before preparing sushi, ocean fish is subjected to a deep shock freezing procedure that helps kill parasites. But for making sushi at home, it's better to use smoked fish, it's safer. Most Popular types of fish for sushi - it's salmon, tuna, eel and mackerel.

Also popular ingredients for sushi are seafood. In the land add octopus, squid, shrimp, caviar, sea urchin and different types of mollusks. When preparing sushi, however, do not use oysters, because they do not mix well with rice. Of vegetables in the land add cucumber, avocado, soakeddried pumpkin (kampyo), lotus root (rakon), pickled radish daikon (takuang), young spinach leaves, pickled ume soy, sauerkraut, bamboo shoots, asparagus and yam.

A common ingredient for sushi is dried shiitake mushrooms. They are grown not only in Japan, but also in many other countries. Also as stuffing for sushi is used Japanese omelette from eggs, soy sauce, sugar, dry powder of chondashi broth and Japanese mayonnaise. Such an omelette fry in a square frying pan in a special way - it goes "puffed". You can put in sushi red meat, chicken or soft cream cheese (although this is already a tribute to Western traditions, which have little in common with traditional Japanese cuisine).

For decoration used ingredients for sushi as multi-colored flying fish roe and fried sesame seeds (black and white). Also for beauty, poppies (rolls) are sometimes wrapped not in nori, but in multi-colored soy paper.

And, of course, it is impossible to eat sushi without soy sauce, pickled ginger and horseradish wasabi. Soy sauce served in a separate saucer - it dips ready sushi. Some lovers of sushi believe that it is not worth dipping different kinds of sushi in the same saucer with sauce. You can add a bit of soy sauce wasabi - Pasta from Japanese horseradish. It has a characteristic green color and is sold already in ready-made form or in the form of a powder, which must be diluted with water. Keep in mind that wasabi is very sharp, so do not overdo it with him. Between different types of sushi eat pickled ginger, to break the taste.

As you can see, some ingredients for sushiquite unusual for us, but most of them can already be purchased not only in specialized stores, but also in large supermarkets. And when you next eat sushi, you'll know exactly what they're made of - which means they will not cause you the slightest fear!