Sushi 101 with Aburi

What Are The Different Types of Sushi (and How To Eat Them)

This week’s guide is brought to you by, Autumn Hong - the General Manager of Minami Toronto.

Perfect Pairings is a segment of Aburi To-Go that aims to provide education to eaters online about Japanese cuisine. This edition of our Perfect Pairings will showcase the different types of sushi and how to properly eat them. 

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If you've ever been to a Japanese restaurant and looked at the menu, you'll notice that there's tons of different types of sushi available and different ways to enjoy them. Today we're going to be talking about different types of sushi. Including sashimi, nigiri, oshis, temakis, and maki, which is something probably that you're most well familiar with, which are the small rolls with rice and ingredients inside.

The most familiar one is maki, or sushi rolls. These are your standard offerings that almost anyone who’s had sushi has enjoyed. This edition is also going to talk about nigiri, oshi and temaki, how they’re made and how they were designed to be enjoyed. 

Let's get started with sashimi.

Sashimi is actually not sushi. They're two different things. Where sushi generally refers to any types of sushi or seafood served with some rice, and sashimi refers to just enjoy the meat on itself without rice, as you can see right here.

Fun fact number two, sashimi isn't just meant to be enjoyed with fish, but different types of meat, vegetables, or other ingredients as well. Chef's creativity is basically the limit. Sashimi is most often served on a bed of shredded vegetables like Japanese daikon, which is radish. The bed of vegetables is for two things. One being, keeping the temperature at a consistent cold to cool depending on the type of fish, but also to add a little bit of texture and flavor to your experience of enjoying the sashimi itself. It will most often be served with soy sauce, but not necessarily always wasabi, as soy sauce is the traditional method of enjoy the sashimi with. But, here we do have a little bit of wasabi.

Very traditionally in Japan, you are meant to keep soy sauce and wasabi separate. Although nowadays in the 21st century, a lot of people do tend to enjoy mixing the wasabi into the soy sauce. But traditionally, what we would do is placed just a little more of wasabi onto the fish itself before we dip it into the soy sauce and voila, a great experience is ready for you.

Now that we've enjoyed some sashimi as our appetizer, let's move on to the main course, sushi.

We're going to get started with nigiri, which is a little pillow of rice topped with a main ingredient, most notably, the fish and rice. This is one of the oldest ways of preparing sushi in Japan. In fact, probably the claim to fame in terms of how popular sushi is in then the 21st century today. The chefs will usually prepare the little pillow of rice by hand and then top it with just little dollop of wasabi before covering it with the fish.

What is the proper method of enjoying nigiri? Well, in fact, it is most customary to enjoy nigiris by hand versus using chopsticks, so that the nigiri piece stays intact during the whole experience. You are recommended to put a little dollop of wasabi on top of the fish before turning the piece upside down, dipping it into the soy sauce face down, and then of course, enjoying it face down as well. By having the fish enter your mouth face down, you're able to enjoy and experience the different flavours and the texture of the fish before the rice starts moving around and creating a different experience. Most of the times chefs will prepare the plate from leanest fish to the fattiest fish, so that you know the order in which to enjoy them. By starting from the leanest type of fish you're ensuring that the experience of the fattiest fish will not come in the way of enjoying the leanest type of fish later.

Next let's move on to oshi, or oshizushi.

Oshizushi's actually one of the oldest methods of preparing sushi in Japan, where a wooden mold is used to press the fish and the rice together. Back in the day, it was used as a means to preserve the freshness of the fish while it was being enjoyed and transported. Nowadays, it's being enjoyed all over the world, including right here in North America. I believe that Aburi Restaurants Canada has something to do with it. Typically, oshizushi has been enjoyed on its own with a little bit of wasabi and soy sauce as with most other sushis. But, at Minami Restaurant Toronto, what we've done differently, and that people have loved so much, is that every time we create an oshizushi we have paired it with its own unique sauce pairings and then flame seared it to perfection. Imparting a great flame seared flavour as well as different textures that you don't typically get from regular oshis. With our oshizushis at our restaurants, you don't actually need any soy sauce or wasabi. The only requirement is to sit back and enjoy the flavour.

With the introduction of preparing sushi like nigiri and oshi, where the fish was enjoyed with a little bit of rice to help preserve the freshness, sushi became more widespread across the country where people were able to enjoy the raw fish and rice experience, not only along the coastlines, but all over. Of course, different methods of enjoying sushi followed. As an example, temaki or handheld sushi was introduced. Temaki consists of a rice base fish as the main ingredient, and other types of vegetables and pickles altogether on a sheet of nori or Japanese sushi seaweed. It is designed to be enjoyed on the go or just with your hands. The best way to enjoy the temaki is just to pick it up with your clean hands, dip it in a little bit of soy sauce and off we go.

The next & last type of sushi that we're going to be going through today is the maki, or the roll.

Now, there's actually different types of rolls, or makis. They're usually three main different types. The first one being hosomaki, which is typically just one main ingredient, a little small roll with seaweed wrapped on the outside. You'll also notice that, although we said, "It's wrapped in seaweed," it's yellow on the outside. Nori is not the only ingredient used to wrap different types of maki. We can use soy sheets or other different types of exterior shells. The last type is uramaki, probably the one that you're most familiar with, where the rice is on the outside and the ingredients and the seaweed is rolled on the inside of the roll.

Makis being one of the newest additions to the sushi family was born out of necessity of convenience and transportation. Where, as you can see, it's very easy to enjoy anywhere and can be preserved for more than a few hours at a time. In Japan, it's most often enjoyed at places like bus terminals or train stations where people are on the go and need a delicious, but fast and easy option. Uramakis are actually more popular in North America than it is in Japan. In fact, uramakis and different types of them were first introduced in North America before moving its way to Japan.

To watch our video on YouTube which explains the differences between these sushi types, click here.