Sushi Chef Answers Sushi Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

i'm taka sakaira sushi chef and owner of naminoy restaurants i'll be answering your questions from twitter this is sushi support [Music] queen's custodian asks i know this seems like a stupid question but can i just buy sushi great fish from the market and cut it up and that's sashimi simple answer yes sashimi is raw fish sliced for consumption so the only questions come into mind are what is sushi grade generally in the american markets sushi grade is referring to any fish that has been treated in a way to prevent bacterial growth generally when we are talking about sushi grade fish in japan oftentimes it needs to be wild fish it needs to be lying caught there's a process called ikijime it is a technique used to kill the fish instantly and then to remove the nerves from the spinal cord to reduce the amount of lactic acid that is released into the fish gj wellington hurst as interactive tweet please reply to this with a description of your ideal sushi rule so my ideal sushi roll actually is very simple i like what we call hosomaki i can show you one right now here i have a makisu makisu is the bamboo mat designed for rolling sushi seaweed actually has two sides shiny side and rough side for this we're going to leave the rough side on the outside i'm going to get the appropriate amount of rice here basically make a little bed for my protein to sit inside and wasabi and then i'm going to fill with tuna i'm going to bring the back edge of the nori to the front where the rice meets create one nice press roll over to make the final seal and basically now my tuna roll is done and generally hosumaki is cut into six pieces very simple tuna inside some nice wasabi soy sauce that's heaven uverness asks how much wasabi is too much let's start with what is wasabi wasabi is a rhizome it is often growing on the sides of very freshwater streams all you need to do to produce wasabi is take this wasabi root and grind it what's most commonly seen in the us markets is some sort of derivative of horseradish that has been colored with food coloring and maybe there's some other seasonings added salt or sugar unless you actually see a chef with the actual wasabi root you're most likely having horseradish and the reason why fresh wasabi isn't used in all restaurants is this is very expensive if you're using enough to overpower the flavor of the fish and you're just using it to mask everything i'll say that's too much okay ccs how many of you have had sushi are there different types is it good does it taste someone like chicken or salmon tell me does it ever taste like chicken no i will say there's no sushi out there that should taste like chicken as far as different types i do have a platter here of different types of sushi here you have takamaki my favorite roll next to that is called gunkan the rice underneath that's wrapped with seaweed topped with ikura in front there's two pieces of akami nigiri zushi and then here's a sashimi two slices of kami there and this is kind of a not a traditional tomaki but in the style of there's salmon yellowtail tuna and some cucumbers in there and a salmon roll with tobiko called uramaki where the rice is on the outside and this also is another way that we can incorporate more ingredients into a roll so that we can have you know more creativity or different types of things inside of a roll honey 504 asks for sushi eaters what is eel sauce my son said blood and all of a sudden i'm not well okay i i think that your son needs to show you some respect and stop lying to you your sauce is not blood real oil sauce is made from roasting the bones from the eel creating a stock basically eel stock and adding that with soy sauce sometimes meating some type of sugar steeping that in the bones to create eel sauce sushi pop uss what's the strangest ingredient you've had in a sushi roll for me it's not personally strange but maybe people might find it to be strange there's a fish called fugu the puffer fish and in the wild they eat certain shellfish and it creates a poison in their body and this is one of the most poisonous fish in the ocean if you take that same fish and farm raise it not allow that fish to have certain shellfish there's no poison creating the fish so now you're able to eat the entire fish from one of these farm-raised fugu one of the best parts is actually the liver fugu liver in a roll with shiso leaf and some ume paste is one of my favorite rules abandons asks why is sushi so expensive it's five grains of rice and like a gram of fish wtf fish tends to be expensive especially high grade very fresh fish grating is depending on obvious taste texture fat content but also color grading from yellowfin 18 a pound up to 70 a pound depending on different cuts of that fish the most prized fish are generally line caught that causes the least amount of damage to the fish the boat has a refrigeration that might increase the cost to the fishermen and on top of that there's a lot of waste that goes into fish a lot of the fish is not edible for sushi coletti susan asks why do sushi chefs wear bandanas when making sushi i never thought of that as a tough workout being a sushi chef is tough work i think that what you see as a guest is literally ten percent of what the work a sushi chef does ninety percent is the prep and there are large fish like including bluefin sometimes whole fish can be 800 pounds so if you're carrying a quarter of it you need several people to carry that around running around all day long this is generally a job that's you know 12 hours on their feet minimum 96 dyn asks when did sushi start having avocados in it can avocados even be grown in japan sushi avocados i think was an american advent this was sometime in the 80s or early 90s when the california became popular the abbreviation for california being ca is a crab and avocado this is i think that's the original reason why the name california rope came to be does it grow in japan i haven't seen many avocado trees in japan maybe there's someone growing on avocado trees somewhere in japan but this is not common food for japanese people rahit yukon asks in japan it takes up to 20 years of school to become a sushi chef which is years longer than it takes to become a doctor is this true i think that three to five years you should have a pretty good understanding if you're really dedicated and really studying hard and working hard at it there's been a lot of kind of lore surrounding sushi chefs and to be honest i think the most simple answer is that if you're a sushi chef and you want to call yourself that you're always studying you're always learning so 20 years is really a short time to become a sushi chef subway three asks i forgot to get chopsticks for my sushi so what am i supposed to do now eat it with a fork like some kind of a lunatic i don't think that you're a lunatic if you decide to use a fork to eat your sushi but there's also an alternate option sushi is finger foods so if you'd like you can just use your hands pick it up and enjoy flip caboose asks what kind of fish do i use for fresh sushi rolls there are many different types of fish for sushi but if we're talking about sushi at home in the u.s markets i do have some fish here today that you could find in the markets tuna here salmon and yellowtail tuna specifically we are looking for bright red color nothing should look sad it should be bright this is called a saku and these are basically taken from the entire fish cut into these kind of rectangle shapes in preparation for cutting for sushi or sashimi in order to create a tender cut i'm going to cut against the grain this would be for sushi all right so here i have a piece of salmon and it's just a little bit easier to see the sinew lines in the salmon sinew is the connective tissue that is connecting the muscle fibers generally speaking you can cut this in any direction and you shouldn't really feel the sinew too much getting sorted asks we have been making and eating sushi lately but we can't get the rice right what is your secret to perfect sushi rice i have a bowl here sushi rice prepared one thing we want to make sure is that we're starting with the right type of sushi rice most commonly in american markets you'll find a type of japanese grain called koshihikari it is a short grain japanese rice and that is most commonly used in sushi preparation after that is really about washing process is about releasing the starch you know we want the rice to be able to stick together to form a ball but we don't want it to be gummy and too sticky if this is overcooked you're going to see that this is like a big mosh and it's going to look very very moist and wet and you'll see that the grains aren't individually distinct and then on the other side if this is undercooked it'll look too distinct and it'll kind of flutter and fall apart versus i don't know if you can see there's a little bit of a stretch and they're kind of you know dragging each other along understanding that reading that to really focus in on and getting those fine details takes a long time to understand hot toddy 24 asks it was only right to get sushi on last night in cali because how fresh can it really be in utah will you have fresh sushi in utah versus california maybe it might be a day a day different but also modern sushi chefs are now are using aging process you might be thinking that it's fresh fish but sometimes chefs are now aging toro for instance for up to two weeks and allowing kind of a natural fermentation to occur obviously in safe environment and controlling bacterial growth the idea there is to reduce the moisture content and increase the flavor and the tenderness by going uh through aging process richard chu asks soy sauce question do you think putting soy sauce on everything especially white rice is faux pas personally it makes me cringe when i see people put soy sauce on rice or dipping their sushi in gallons of soy sauce but that's just me simply put answer is yes it is faux pas to put soy sauce on everything if you're going to a high-end sushi omakasa restaurant omakase means literally translates to the chef's choice and so generally this is a type of restaurant where you don't make any decisions except for maybe what you're going to drink generally the chef is going to you know basically manicure everything to the way chef wants it so that would include the amount of soy sauce or seasoning that's put on every fish if you are in a more kind of quote-unquote casual sushi restaurant you do have the option to have your own soy sauce and it won't come seasoned but generally the idea here is if you put soy sauce all over the rice the rice will fall apart and you won't have a you know a beautiful piece anymore it'll be it'll decompose just from being wet amelie over asks today while eating sushi i told my boyfriend he's meant to eat the ginger between the different pieces and not on top of the sushi and he snapped back this is how they did it in japan and i've been thinking of it ever since have i been taught wrong i think that amelie over you've been taught correctly fishy ginger is meant to be a palette cleanser between bites of sushi there are certain pieces that work really well with sushi sushi ginger and i think that there's nothing wrong with it but again setting is important if you're in a restaurant where the chef is serving you exactly how the chef wants it to be eaten it would be very disrespectful to put that piece of ginger on top of that fish and enjoying it together kodi twist one asks what is imitation crab even made of sushi is ruined imitation crab most often is made out of pollock that's been turned into a paste mixed with some sort of starch and some seasonings sometimes they use artificial crab flavor or maybe real crab juice this is actually a japanese fish product called tsurimi in japan sudimi products are not marketed as imitation crab vivurosa asks what is temaki so tamaki directly translates to hand roll i think most commonly is the cone shaped where you'll see kind of the ingredients sticking out at the top and the idea here is to turn this corner into the side here and wrap the nori stays crisp because it's so quick and easy to make but also this style has become very popular at to do at home so generally if people are coming together and having a party at home everyone is making tamaki's at home gazdivs asks question for sushi lovers am i supposed to eat this leaf and if so how do i do it using chopsticks this is a called shiso or also known as oba and yes it is edible it kind of has a minty herbaceous flavor and i love to have it just wrapped around a piece of sashimi it adds a great different dynamic to the flavor of the dish nicole kanahan asks how do sushi chefs cut sushi rolls so perfectly neat i don't get it so it takes a lot of time dedication and practice most commonly in the beginning when you first start learning how to cut we go from center and cut it in half cut this in half again and then on each side we cut these in half it's obviously much easier to see something bisected something that's half than to see and understand what one piece is but as we advance faster way is to cut this in half and instead of cutting it in half again just going from left to right straight but this takes practice so that we understand each piece and how big it should be and so generally uh japanese sushi knives we call yanagi designed to be a little bit thinner behind the blade and has the bevel which is much more elongated to kind of create a thinner blade and easier to slide through ryan d jacobs asks what kind of vinegar do you add to rice for making sushi sushi vinegar can either be made with rice vinegar or red vinegar called akazu this is a vinegar produced from the leaves of sake this is kind of the residual byproduct of making sake and then you know age to create a vinegar and through the aging process it kind of turned to this kind of red color and you'll often see uh now in higher end sushi restaurants the resurgence of akazu and actually akazu now is more expensive than the rice vinegar and the smell is very very strong and so this is actually associated with a kind of story of the apprentice waving you know the sushi rice as the master is mixing the rice with the vinegar there's a lure that says that actually that akazu is so cheap and the smell was so pungent that the apprentice was there not to wave off and cool down the rice but just to blow away the smell and the scent from this from the master susie tobias asks what are these teeny wee orange bubble things on the outside of my sushi i like them fun to pop i think that suzy tobias is referring to tobiko tobiko is the row from flying fish this is uh you know manufactured and this is created there's flavorings in here there's some food coloring in here as well and you know one of the great things about this i think is that it has msg in there as well and so it actually adds as a great flavor booster to anything that you added to from dkd22 who invented sushi hahahaha it's so good so sushi that we know today edomaizushi is credited to a gentleman named hana hao yohe this was around 1820 i would say the original sushi was almost like fast food this was originally done through basically street vendors these were carts that carried around the rice and the fish and served on street sides so people would come by eat a couple pieces and be on their day sushi underscore ebooks asks what is your favorite slice of fish i'm gonna assume and interpret that this question means what's my favorite piece of sushi so i have here uh sea urchin this is my favorite this is actually the gonads from sea urchin the sea urchin is kind of a round spherical hard shelled with a bunch of spikes sticking out of it has a very subtle sweetness nice ocean flavor and for some people it's an acquired taste amber lynn asks sushi question is a spicy tuna roll tuna and wasabi or tuna salad made with spicy mayo tuna and wasabi together we call tekamaki which is just tuna roll spicy tuna roll is referring to tuna mixed with spicy mayonnaise and then put into a roll big nizzy nft asks when did sushi in america become a cream cheese log slathered in mayo late 80s and into the 90s there was a little bit of hesitation for you know the non-japanese consumer to have raw fish and obviously cream cheese and mayonnaise they do work in some types of sushi i think it was just a great way and creative way to introduce sushi to a wider audience as long as people understand that this is not traditional chefs have the creative freedom to do whatever they want i think and at the end of the day the consumers will decide if it's good or not okra wind asks how do sushi chefs not cut off their finger or something with all the sake and beer they drink practice makes perfect i guess this is a practice among sushi chefs i think that it is nice for a guest to offer a beverage to the chef and i think that this is really designed and was originally to build rapport and it's more of like a friendly gesture you're out with friends and you offer somebody a drink i don't think that a sushi chef should be there behind the sushi counter getting belligerently drunk i don't think that's appropriate a responsible sushi chef should know when to say no all right that's all the questions i hope you learned something until next time [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 2,595,667

Keywords: innovation, nami nori, ott tech support, science & technology, sushi, sushi 101, sushi chef, sushi chef explains, sushi explained, sushi questions, sushi support, sushi tech support, sushi wired, taka sakaeda, taka sushi, tech support, what is sushi, wired, wired sushi, wired tech support, wired tech support sushi

Id: -ju6y-pHByw

Length: 16min 23sec (983 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022