7 Things You Should Do & Avoid When Making Sushi (Simple Advice from a Sushi Chef)

1. Keep your hands wet before touching sushi rice

Before touch, the rice with your hands, make sure to have hand water (Te-Mizu). Otherwise, you will end up like the guy in the main picture of this article.

2. Avoid making your hands too wet when touching sushi rice

Wet hands are good, but too wet is a problem. Too much water on your hand will make the sushi rice too wet. Wet sushi rice will crumble when you apply on the Nori Seaweed, or try to form a ball for nigiri. Not too wet and not too dry. There is always a happy medium.

3. Add vinegar or lemon juice to your hand water

Acid from vinegar and lemon can break the starch from rice on your hand.

4. Minimize contact with sushi rice

It’s obvious but easier said than done. The less you touch sushi rice, the cleaner your hands will stay. Think efficiency.

5. Sharpen your knife before start making sushi

Another obvious point. I’ve been teaching online sushi-making classes since July 2020. Many attendees told me, “Gee, my knife is not sharp enough” when slicing the roll, vegetables, and fish. Solution? Buy this $30 Electric Knife Sharpener(affiliate link) from Amazon. It does work amazingly. I use them too.

6. Keep the sushi rice at body temperature (37°C or 98.6°F)

It is said Sushi, especially Nigiri, tastes the best when rice is at our body temperature. Use the container to keep it at that temperature, or use a rice cooker to keep it warm, or you can even microwave sushi rice if it gets too cold.

7. Keep your cutting board clean, free of food debris

When you have food debris on the cutting board, they will get in your way of making sushi. They may end up sticking to your sushi.

Breakthrough Sushi now offers online sushi-making class for team building, client appreciation, birthday, celebration and holiday event.

For more information about our online sushi making class, email: info@breakthroughsushi.com