How to cook SUSHI RICE 🍣 〜寿司飯〜 easy Japanese home cooking recipe

Welcome to Taiji's Kitchen. Today, I'm going to show you how to make sushi rice. I think sushi is nowadays the very first thing that comes to mind when people think about Japan. So this is also the most requested by my friends or my viewers. And in this video I'm only going to show you how to make the sushi rice because this is the base for any other sushi dishes such as makizushi, nigirizushi, chirashizushi, or any other kind of sushi. And I'll make other videos on how to make different kind of sushi. Then, let's get started. Here are the ingredients for sushi rice. Here, I have two cups of rice. Please use these kind of Japanese sushi rice or short grain rice. Don't use basmati rice or other kind of long grain rice. They're not very suited for sushi. And then I have also kombu kelp. If you don't have this, you don't have to have it. It's not mandatory, but it gives another aroma to the sushi. And then I have vinegar, sugar, and salt. So I like to use apple vinegar. If you have rice wine vinegar, then great. That's the best. You want to use that. But today, I didn't have it. And I like using apple vinegar because they're not too sweet and they don't have very fruity aroma. And they're pretty sour when compared to regular white wine vinegar. White wine vinegar tends to be a bit sweeter and don't have the tangy sourness to it, I think. And they tend to be a bit more fruity. So I like to use apple vinegar. But if you don't have apple vinegar or rice wine vinegar, then you can of course use just regular white wine vinegar. So let's rinse the rice. I'm going to put two cups of rice in a pot. So it's better to use a bigger pot than the smaller pot. So it's a pretty big pot, but I like to use this because the water is going to come up and bigger is always better. Well, in this case. So then I'm going to put some water in this. Now first mix. You want to get that right away. We're going to rub the rice against each other. So, of course, you can mix like this. That's not a problem. But in Japan, a lot of people rinse the rice like this way. And then rinse again. So you see how the water is fogged up. So you want to get this out. And then we're going to put it back in and then rinse one more time. So you see it's less foggy, but still pretty foggy. We're going to get that out. So I'm going to rinse it one more time. Now I'm going to put it back in. And then rinse for the last time. So you see how the water is clear. So you want to rinse it until it gets this clear. And then I'm going to put it in a strainer. I'm going to put everything in the strainer like this and let the water drain for a minute or so. So one minute has passed. See how the water is very clear. So you want to rinse the rice so that the running water is very clear like this. And then in the pot, I'm going to put the rice back in. When we usually cook the rice, we cook the ratio with the rice to water 1 to 1.2. But for the sushi, after it gets cooked, we're going to add in another fluid of Sushizu, which is sushi vinegar mix. When we cook the rice, we want to cook with less water. So for sushi rice, we are going to cook with the same amount of water. So I'm going to add in 2 cups of water. Here's exactly 2 cups of water. I'm going to add in. And we're going to let it sit and let the rice soak up the water. We can cook just like this, but we're going to put in kombu kelp. For 2 cups of rice and 2 cups of water, we're going to add in about 5 grams. So this one strip is about 5 grams. We're going to add in this kombu kelp. And this is a bit too big, so I'm going to cut it in half, put in right in. So the amount of kombu doesn't look very much, but when they soak up the water, they're going to grow. So we're going to let this sit and let the rice soak up the water for at least half an hour to an hour until the rice goes all white instead of this kind of halfway see-through. So this has been soaked in water for about an hour. You see that the kombu kelp has soaked up the water and has grown. So they get this big. It's very surprising. So I'm going to just cook this like a regular rice. I'm going to turn the heat to high and wait till it boils. So rice is boiling. I'm going to give a little mix here and then turn the heat to low. Then I'm going to set the timer to 10 minutes. I always forget to turn it off in 10 minutes, so I just set the timer and then it's for sure. While we wait for the rice to be cooked, I'm going to prepare the sushi zu, which is sushi vinegar. I'm going to first use four tablespoons of vinegar. And to that, I'm going to add in three tablespoons of sugar. Two, three. To that, I'm going to add in one teaspoon of salt. And then I'm going to turn the heat to medium and just cook this until the sugar dissolves. So I actually don't want to bring this to boil because if you boil it, then you'll lose the aroma of the vinegar. I'm just going to keep mixing so that the sugar dissolves. So here I'm using brown sugar, but if you don't have brown sugar, you can just use regular white sugar. No problem. So I think the sugar has dissolved. I'm going to turn off the heat and have a little taste. Perfect. Then I'm going to let it cool. Wait till the rice cooks. So the rice has finished cooking. I'm not going to open this right now because I want to keep the steam in here. Then I'm going to turn the heat off and then set the timer for another 10 minutes and let it steam on its own, like when you cook Japanese rice normally. While we wait for the rice to be steamed, I'm going to prepare this sushi-oke or also called handai. This is a Japanese wooden bowl or wooden, I don't know, plate or whatever you want to call it. So this is made of hinoki. It's a kind of cedar that grows in Japan and that's supposed to have sanitizing effect. And we use this wooden bowl for sushi so that this takes out a little bit of the moist or a little bit of the water from the rice so it doesn't get watery. But if I use this dry and directly put the rice, everything's going to stick onto this. So I'm just going to wet this first. I'm going to first put the water here. I'm just going to wet everything, all the sides, and then take the water away. And then I'm going to lightly take away the water. So you don't want to have it totally wet, but you don't want to have it totally dry. So this is going to be good dry. And of course, I would assume you don't have this at home. If you don't have this, I would recommend using some kind of wooden bowl. If you don't have any wooden plate or bowl, then you can, of course, use a regular big bowl or ceramic or any other bowl. So the rice is finished. Let's see. Looks good. So I'm going to wet the spatula. And let's see, I'm going to take this out. I'm going to take away the rice from it. And this as well. Oh, it's hot. I'm going to try not to waste any rice grain. And then let's see. Looks good. So this is a little bit harder cooked than regular rice, because to this, it comes the vinegar. So at the end, it'll be about the same amount of water. So let's go. Okay, let's start making the sushi rice. So I'm going to first put in the sushi. So this part, you want to make it as quick as possible. And to this, I'm going to add in the sushi vinegar. I'm going to use a spatula like this so that it spreads evenly. I'm going to first only put in the half of it. And then I'm going to mix it up. So you want to kind of mix using cutting, you don't want to smash the grain of the rice. And then while I do this, what you want to do is you want to use a fan and keep fanning. So unfortunately, I have only two hands. So like this, fanning, fanning, like so. So ideally, you want to have two person, one person is fanning, the other person is mixing the rice. And then I'm going to put the second batch all around. I'm fanning, fanning, cut. When you have like a part like this, where it's white, then you want to kind of cut it so that all the sushi vinegar gets in, like so. Turn from the bottom and keep cutting, keep cutting. So you want to mix the sushi rice as evenly as possible. So this is finished. And the reason why I'm fanning this during the time I mix is that you add extra fluid to the rice and the rice is still very warm. So you want to use the heat of the rice to vapor the fluid of the sushi vinegar and then kind of mix it evenly. And so that the fluid, the water vapors, but the flavor stays in the rice. And also at the same time, it cools down. So that's why we're doing this. So this is finished. I'm going to prepare the ingredients now. So during the time I leave this, it's still a bit warm, so it's going to get dry. What I'm going to do is I'm going to cover it with a wet towel. You might have seen this in sushi bar, where the chef take the rice from things like this, and then it's always covered with wet towel. And so that's what you want to do. So then this is the end of sushi rice making. I'm going to see you in the next video for the makizushi and other sushi videos. I'll see you next time. Bye.