What Is Sushi?

Sushi is the name for a wide range of Japanese rice dishes consisting of cooked vinegary rice combined with other ingredients, seafood, vegetables and sometimes tropical fruits. Ingredients and forms of its presentation vary widely, but the ingredient which all sushi have in common is rice.

Sushi can be prepared with either brown or white rice. It is often prepared with raw seafood, but some common varieties of sushi use cooked ingredients or are vegetarian. Also served with pickled ginger, wasabi, and soy sauce. Popular garnishes are often made using daikon.

Raw fish (or occasionally other meat) sliced and served without rice is called “sashimi”. Sushi chefs can be real artists making food that looks pretty enough to hang on the wall. But raw fish isn’t the only tool of the sushi artist. Seaweed, raw squid and other ocean foods add to the master’s palette.

In a crowded country with little land and lots of ocean, people learn to create with creatures from the sea. Japanese people could buy “fast-food” as early as 1680—hundreds of years before the world’s first burger place opened.

Content for this question contributed by Sean Smith, resident of Clark, southern Union County, New Jersey, USA