Sushi

This article is about Japanese cuisine. For other uses, see Sushi (disambiguation).

Front row, left to right: uramaki roll, inarizushi, and nigiri (two kinds). Rear row: gunkanmaki.
In Japanese cuisine, sushi is a food made of vinegared rice combined with seafood. Most, but not all, fish used in sushi is un-cooked, but other ingredients may be cooked, blanched, sauteed, or marinated.
Sushi is an English word that has come to refer to a complete dish with rice and toppings; this is the sense used in this article. The original term Japanese: (-zushi in some compounds such as makizushi), written in kanji, means snack and refers to rice, but not fish or other toppings.
Outside of Japan, sushi is often misunderstood to mean clumps of rice topped with raw fish or even the raw fish by itself. It is also misunderstood to refer to fresh raw-seafood dishes, such as a Japanese delicacy called sashimi (sushi and sashimi are considered distinct in Japan).
There are various types of sushi. Sushi served rolled in nori (dried and pressed layer sheets of seaweed or alga) is called maki or rolls. Sushi made with toppings laid with hand-formed clumps of rice is called nigiri, toppings stuffed into a small pouch of fried tofu called inari; and toppings served scattered over a bowl of sushi rice called chirashi-zushi.

History

Sushi originated from the practice of preserving fish by fermenting it in rice for months. This tradition can be traced back to Southeast Asia, specifically the Mekong River area of Indochina. These dishes of fermented fish in rice still exist today: pla som in Thailand and Laos and ngachin in Burma all mean "sour tasting fish". There are no known names for this type of dish in Chinese or Korean; therefore, it may have been introduced into Japan directly from Southeast Asia, along with Southeast Asian rice.
Modern Japanese sushi has little resemblance to the traditional fermented rice dish. When the fermented fish was taken out of the rice, only the fish was consumed and the rice was discarded.

The strong-tasting narezushi made near Lake Biwa resembles the traditional fermented dish.

Starting in the Muromachi Period of (1336–1573) in Japan, rice vinegar was added to the mixture for a better taste. Rice vinegar also accentuated the sourness of the rice dish and was known "to increase its life span", allowing the fermentation process to be shortened and eventually abandoned.
During the following centuries, the development of oshi-zushi (seafood and rice were pressed into wooden moulds) in Osaka arrived in Edo (present-day Tokyo) in the middle of the 18th century. In the early 19th century in Edo, the dish evolved into Edo-mae zushi, which used fish freshly caught in the Edo-mae (Edo Bay). At that time, it was considered an inexpensive meal for many people. This Edo-mae zushi has become the standard sushi popular today throughout Japan and the world.
The science behind the fermentation of fish in rice is that the vinegar produced from the fermenting rice breaks down the fish into amino acids. This results into one of the five basic tastes called umami. When added, rice vinegar shortened the fermentation process.