Making Sushi at Home, part 3: equipment

Almost ready to start making delicious sushi rolls, but first a few words about the equipment you’ll need. As with preparing all great foods, making great sushi requires using the proper equipment.

The sushi knife is the most cherished possession of the itamai (sushi chef) and likely the most expensive as well. Don’t worry though, you won’t need to buy the fanciest cutlery to get started. But don’t overlook this important tool either – your sushi knife must be a clean, sharp knife made for this purpose. Best of all, decent knives like this one can be had at reasonable prices these days. By the way, don’t make the mistake of buying a sashimi knife first if you’re going to start by learning to make sushi rolls.

Rice cookers are great. A purist would perhaps disagree, but I’m confident that good sushi rice can be made in an electric appliance. Buy a Japanese model, like the ones you see at sites that sell sushi rice cookers. If you’re not ready to invest in one don’t fret. You can make it the old-fashioned way, in a pot, it’s just harder to do.

You’re also going to need one of those bamboo rolling mats called sudare. There are contraptions that let you put the nori and rice into a container and squeeze them into sushi rolls, but I don’t recommend this. You want to control the size and shape of your sushi rolls, and to learn the technique to produce wonderful, custom rolls.

A few miscellaneous things you’ll want too, like a rice paddle. It’s important to cool the cooked rice quickly without damaging it, and a rice paddle was designed just for this task. You certainly want to have some chopsticks on hand so you can eat the rolls you make, and perhaps a set of fancy sushi plates and soy sauce containers as well.