You may recall us mentioning that the rice is the most important ingredient; the heart and soul of the sushi. Preparing the sushi rice well is critical to the outcome. Apprentices used to spend the first couple of years mastering the techniques of sushi rice preparation, but you should be able to produce good sushi rice in far less time.

Start with a good Japanese short grain sticky rice. Rinse it by filling container with rice and water, moving your hand from side to side in the bottom, stirring up the rice. You’ll see the water turn cloudy soon, and that’s your queue to drain the water. Repeat a couple more times until the water is nearly clear after your stirring.

Cook in a rice cooker if at all possible, otherwise make sure to watch carefully to avoid overcooking. It’s critical too that you are careful about the amount of water you add – too much results in soggy rice, and too little results in rice that’s not soft enough. One knuckle of water is the age-old rule of thumb, but in modern times we simply measure carefully according to the lines on the side of the rice cooker. If you happen to have a small square of kombu (kelp) place it into the rice and water to add a subtle flavor to the rice.

Now this part is very important. When the rice has finished cooking your goal is to cool it off very rapidly, yet avoid damaging the rice. Take your rice paddle and make angled cutting motions through the rice. You want to expose the hot inner rice to the cool air without smashing the delicate pieces of rice. In the old days a paddle fan was used to actively fan the hot rice. But feel free to substitute an electric fan, on the highest setting, poised right over your bowl.

In order to get the maximum exposure to the cool air, sushi chefs traditionally used a very wide flat wooden bowl. This shape is the best for exposing the most rice as quickly as possible to the cool air. However it may be hard for your to find a suitable bowl. If that’s the case, just use the widest shallowest bowl you’ve got.

Finally, while you’re using your rice paddle to cool the hot rice, you want to drizzle small amounts of rice vinegar into the rice. Make sure to mix it into the rice well using your rice paddle. If it’s evenly distributed as the rice is cooling then you’ll get that faint sour taste to the rice that perfectly compliments the featured ingredients.

OK you’ve made a great batch of sushi rice. The rice is still warm, slightly vinegared and ready for action. Leave the rice in it’s bowl, and cover with a damp towel to prevent drying out. Do not refrigerate and keep the towel covering it wet by adding water when needed.

OK time for a bit of transparency around our sushi restaurant rankings. When we review a sushibar we always assign a ranking on a scale of zero to five. We may rank it differently on a subsequent visit. You probably disagree with the ranking frequently. Such is the nature of reviewing restaurants.

Freshness/quality of seafood – this is of paramount importance in the world of sushi, I don’t think it really requires explanation. This is not meant to penalize the sushibars not fortunate enough to be located on the coast, but rather to consider the sushi chef’s ability to search out, identify and procure the best fish and willingness to serve only that.

Preparation – the idea is to award quality beyond the freshness of the food items. For sashimi, for example, it’s important that the fish be properly cut to the right thickness, in the right direction, with a single cut, etc. It rarely is in my experience. For nigiri, the rice ball needs to be light and airy with no rice crushed or packed tightly. Tamago (egg) should be so many light, delicate layers of sweet egg that it melts in your mouth. Every now and then you’ll find the chef who actually prepares his own (very rare) or makes his own desserts from scratch. (more…)

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 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 sudari. 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.

Sushi Yama
7050 W Palmetto Park Rd
Boca Raton, FL 33433
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Welcome to another sushi review, this time the Sushi Yama in Boca Raton FL in the shopping center on the southwest corner of Powerline and Palmetto Park roads.

Sushi Yama is a great place to hang out for late night sushi. It stays open until 1am on busy nights, and is often filled to capacity as late as midnight. It’s in a nice neighborhood with a well-lit parking lot and the crowd is friendly.

One of the first things you’ll notice about this place is the assortment of sushi rolls on the menu. They list pretty much every variation that people commonly ask for, and several “local-named rolls”. This is all priced reasonably and we consider this a place to get a good value for your sushi dollars. For lunch they offer some inexpensive specials that are tasty and satisfying. Sushi, sashimi and chirashi are all good choices for lunch here. The green tea is free.

This is not the place for sushi connoisseurs to come looking for adventure though. There do not seem to be any Japanese staff, nor do the sushi chefs appear to have any formal training. This is not terrible, the vast majority of sushibars in the US operate without the guidance of a formally trained sushi chef. And in fact they offer some nice looking bento boxes for lunchtime – we really enjoyed a couple that we tried. But if you’re looking for an authentic Japanese cuisine go elsewhere.


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OK so you’re ready to make sushi at home, let’s get some ingredients that we’ll need to make simple rolls.

Sushi rice is an absolute requirement – if your store does not have it, try another, you cannot compromise on this. Buy online if you can’t find it. I like to buy the big bags of sushi rice, pour the rice into glass jars at home and store in a cool, dry place. But if you don’t eat sushi at home very often, those large bags may be just too much rice for you, since you’re unlikely to use this rice for anything else.

Sushi rice is a short-grained rice that is the heart and soul of sushi. Not the fish – the rice. sushi rice is the most important ingredient, so be sure to buy a good Japanese brand if you can.

You certainly won’t be able to make any sushi rolls without Nori, those thin dark green sheets of laver people mistakenly call “seaweed”. You’ll find a Japanese brand of nori at your store for sure – but check the date! When it’s past the expiration date, nori is terrible! As always, if you can’t get any where you live, order nori online.

When you’re in the store be sure to get these “must-have” sushi items: soy sauce, wasabi, rice wine vinegar. Soy sauce is a subject worthy of a dedicated post, but for now let’s just agree that this salty component is essential. As you eat sushi, you’ll typically use a little bit of shoyu (soy sauce) with each bite.

Wasabi should not really be required, but some stronger or more oily fish really need to have a bit of this horseradish-like stuff. What you’re purchasing in your Japanese grocery is not really wasabi in all likelihood, but let’s just ignore that for now.

You are going to use a bit of rice wine vinegar in your sushi rice preparation to give a hint of sour taste. Again, buy a Japanese brand and read the next installment on making sushi rice for information about how to use.

Optional, but recommended items include pickled ginger, Japanese green tea, The pickled ginger (gari) is used to cleanse the palate after you’ve enjoyed one type of sushi. This allows you to fully appreciate the taste of the next type you eat. Japanese green tea is essential in my book – it’s a perfect foil to the sushi rice. You may drink sake with sashimi, or tempura but to drink sake while eating rice can be considered redundant, like eating a pizza topped with bread.

Finally the “nice to have” items: daikon radish, Japanese Sake, low sodium soy sauce.

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Hiro Sushi
3007 NE 163rd St
North Miami Beach, FL 33160




Hiro Sushi in North Miami Beach is located on the north side of NE 163rd Street in a nondescript shopping center. We went for a sushi meetup and were excited to try a new sushi restaurant. Our findings – the staff were friendly, service fast and the atmosphere wasn’t bad although the decor seems influenced by disco. And yes I’ll be back next time I’m down that way because all fish tasted fresh – a firm requirement!

I tasted grilled ika (squid) that was cooked just right – just chewy enough to make you spend a little time with the taste. My chirashi-don was also well assembled, although I would have preferred the rice to be slightly vinagered.

My rainbow roll was truly uninspired though, despite the fresh fish. It was just boring, from the kani (crab stick) in the inside to the very plain rice to the bland fish toppings. Any little thing to make it a bit different than every other sushi joint would have been so nice.

Finally kudos to Hiro for their menu. Really chocked full of small Japanese items, it’s a great place to experiment. Pick something you haven’t tried and live it up a bit.


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