How to cook sushi rice | sushi roll recipe | sushi pictures

Nigiri sushi is more common than maki and nigiri is much easer to make. Of course many people who just got into sushi making go for maki sushi. I don’t know the reason behind it, but it is true. May be maki sushi looks more beautiful and complicated, but the main difference between both is that nigiri is very light sushi, meanwhile maki a bit heavy (that’s the feeling you get when you eat them).

The understanding of this comes with time or straight away. So, how to make nigiri sushi? Since you already know how to cook sushi rice from my previous guide, I will explain how to make small sushi pieces for nigiri sushi. Well, there are actually three ways: using hands, using rolling mat and using the nigiri sushi making plastic box. There are pros and cons for each method, but good nigiri are done by hand.
So plastic box.

I thought it would be easy to make nigiri and bought one. Well it makes the rice preparation process a bit easer, but you get quite big nigiri pieces and sometimes correction by hand is necessary. Wet the plastic box and add rice, press each side of the box and you got the rice for nigiri.

The Rolling Mat method.
Use plastic layer on top of the mat. Place a chunk of rice on the mat and begin pushing the mat together – making a long wide looking sausage out of the rice. Some strength is needed. When you are done, cut the sausage into pieces of about half an inch wide. Pieces will look a bit ugly so you will have to use hands to give it a better look.

Using hands.
Well, as you can see it comes to using hands anyway. Your hands should be wet, pick a small chunk of rice and use your hand to mould the rice. Hold the rice on your left palm and use the three long fingers to press the rice into the palm. You will get the idea quite fast. Also you will notice that hands will become very sticky even though you apply water, so wash your hands and continue.

How to place a fish on nigiri sushi rice?
Pretty simple, put the fish on top of it. The Japanese method is to take fish place it on the palm and place the nigiri rice on top, then firmly press and fish sticks to the rice.

I have a video prepared to show you how it is done, soon it will appear in the top of this entry.

Coming next …   How to boil shrimps and What are basic ingredients for Nigiri Sushi.