document updated 16 years ago, on Nov 13, 2007
There's lots of articles out there
on making your own sushi, and they can be applied to sashimi as well. Tips that seemed helpful to me in making sashimi at home:
- Temperature affects texture and many people do not like the texture of warm raw fish. After thawing, Place fish in the fridge until used.
- If you can get fresh fish rather than frozen, then this is quite a bit better. Frozen fish is frozen on the boats the hour it is caught, so it doesn't deteriorate on the way to your table. Unfortunatly, freezing and thawing the fish cause quite a few of the cell walls to break down, and the fish is not as nice as fresh. Perhaps this is unnoticeable if the fish is cooked, but it is quite noticeable raw. However in most places this is unnecessary. Fishing boats go out every day and your local fishmonger (or a decent butcher/grocer that is branching out) will get their fish straight from the boats. So you can get fish that is only a few hours old five days a week. Even if your fishmonger only gets fish one day a week, make sushi on that day. Of course, choosing between two-day-old fish and frozen fish gives a clear win to frozen.
- It turns out that most sushi grade fish are deeply frozen (like cryogenic-style). Your average household freezer just won't cut it, and a percentage of parasites can remain alive. The moral of the story is never, ever, use non-sushi grade fish to make sushi. "Fresh" sushi is just frozen sushi that's been thawed.
Sushi-grade fish