• It has to be (very) sticky.
• It mustn’t be too soft. (We don’t want rice mush. The single rice corns should be identifiable.)
• It mustn’t be too hard. (We don’t want to hear or feel a “Crunch” while eating.)
1. Use short grained sushi rice. (Long grained rice won’t work, because it doesn’t get sticky enough.)
2. Wash the rice until the washing water starts to get clean. Massage the rice in some water and then rinse, repeat this until the water is no longer milky.
3. To cook the rice use about 15% more water than sushi rice measured in volume. (So if you use 1 cup of sushi rice, use a little bit more than 1 cup of water. 4 cups of rice approx 1.1 litre of water)
4. Bring the water to boiling point without the rice. (You can add some salt if you want – this depends on your personal taste. Not necessary if you are using soya sauce which is salty enough)
5. Put the rice into the boiling water and continue to boil on the highest heat level of your stove. To prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of your pot, stir the rice several times while it boils. (This is important! Otherwise a thick layer of rice will stick at the bottom of your pot.)
6. After 2-3 minutes turn the heat down to lowest level. (The water should barely continue to boil.)
7. Put a lid on the pot and let the rice simmer for about 10-15 Minutes. (There mustn’t be too much heat! Otherwise the lowest layer of rice will stick to the bottom of the pot.)
8. As soon as the rice has absorbed the water, put it away from the stove and let it rest within the pot covered by the lid. Wait for about 15-20 minutes. (This also seems important! If you don’t wait, your rice probably will be too crunchy.) After that you can add sushi vinegar (see below) and fold into the rice. Be careful not to break the rice grains.
Usually you put the rice in a special wood bowl and mix it there with the vinegar, to avoid chemical reactions with your metal pot. Another solution is to put the rice into a ceramic baking pan or Tupperware dish.
9. Spread the rice in the baking pan (or somewhere else) so that the rice cools down quickly. I use a fan to fan it. Cover the tray with a wet dish cloth to prevent the rice
