How the hell do you...?!
How the hell do you...?
acquire taste for sushi?
i just tried like a tenny tiny microscope bit of sushi for the very first time ever, and i almost threw up. For sushi lovers, what is so good about eating raw fish and how do you develop that acquired taste?
Answers: The first time I tried sushi - I went pale and nearly thew up. I refused to touch it for a year.
Then I went back and tried it again - this time I hated it even more because the stupid seaweed got stuck in my braces.
About 2 years later, I tried sushi (but not with raw fish, with terriyaki chicken) and it was not so bad after all. Especially if you put some soy sauce - then gradually I added wasabi and that was bad.
Why is it good? It's quite refreshing, filling & dirt cheap to make / buy!!!
Now I even make it at home! Maybe not the raw fish - the closest I've gotten is smoked salmon. I don't really even like cooked fish so I'm not surprised I don't enjoy it raw. Different strokes for different folks. NUMBER ONE, CARTMAN:
Sushi is rice rolls
Sashimi is raw fish rice rolls
All sashimi are sushi
Not ALL SUSHI ARE RAW FISH. Smells like my girlfriend. Tastes like my girlfriend. I love sushi but I didn't have to aquire a taste for it. I just loved it from day one, even the raw eel and all that stuff with tentacles. I understand how you feel though because the thought of even a tiny taste of snail or goat's brain makes me want to vomit. If you don't want to eat it, just don't! I don't cuss about it, some sushi I refuse to eat. Some I will try.
There are many sushi's that have cooked fish in them, try those first. First of all, let get a few terms straight. Sashimi is just raw fish; sushi is generally a small piece of fish on a rectangular piece of vinegared rice or rolled into a cylinder of rice and sliced. There is sushi without fish - in Hawaii they make it with Spam. But not all sushi made with fish is made with raw fish. For example, california rolls are made with crab (or krab) and avocado, shrimp sushi is always cooked (as opposed to sweet shrimp, which is raw) and eel is always broiled and topped with a sweet sauce. There is also smoked salmon sushi - lox on rice! I think the easiest raw fish sushi to eat is tuna. So many restaurants today serve seared tuna dishes - the tuna is cooked on the outside and the inside is pretty much what you get on sushi.
You ask what is so good about eating raw fish - that's like asking what is so good about eating chocolate or cheesecake - to me, IT'S JUST GOOD! For me sushi, was not an acquired taste - I did like it from the beginning although I do not care for everything. My faves are tuna, salmon, eel (which is cooked) and yellowtail. I will eat octopus but not sea urchin. (Rather have chewy than gelatinous.) I once had an teacher who was married to an anthropologist. They had lived with indigenous peoples in New Guinea and eaten things like broiled bat and rat stew. When I asked her how should could eat such things, she said, "The only thing that keeps you from eating it is your mind." That said - if you think sushi is disgusting, IT WILL BE!! If you really want to try to fit in with the sushi crowd, start with the california roll, the shrimp and the eel, move on up to the raw tuna and go from there. Don't expect to like everything. Find what you do like and just stick to that! First of all, you have to have the mindset to REALLY try it when you're actually trying it. If you're in the restaurant because you've been dragged there or the like, it's not going to be a good experience overall. Second, educate yourself on what sushi really is and read what everyone else has said about the different types of sushi. Start with something that doesn't even have meat in it, like a California roll (veggies and fake crab meat). Third, if you don't like it, you just don't like it. Don't knock it. "Sushi" is actually the word for a lightly seasoned and vinegared rice snack.
You can have it without fish -- but I assume that your question is more about learning to love raw fish than sushi in general.
It's true you can start slowly with the sea-free varieties, or even with the plastic boxes of preservative-laden, fake crab and old carrot shreds wrapped in gluey rice and nori at the supermarket.... but to me, that's going at it backward.
My advice?
Start with maguro, or even hamachi (varieties of raw tuna).
But prepare your mind first..
Slow down. Savor.
Don't expect it to be "yucky", and it won't be.
A good piece of raw fish is delicate, silky, and not the least bit slimy or "fishy".
It has to be much fresher than almost any other fiish you can buy, and is held to the highest standards of cleanliness and purity.
Approach it with an appreciation of its cost and desirability, and with the expectation of exquisite pleasure....
Start by thinking of other wonderfully soft, melting flavors, other foods with a sensuous mouth feel...
Like...ripe brie.
A spoonful scooped from a summer-ripe cantaloupe.
A tender mouthful from the center of a warm, perfectly rare roast beef..
A spoonful of silky hot fudge sauce.
THEN you're ready to taste a small cube of fresh maguro..
Roll a bit on your tongue, breathe in the flavor, swallow gently.
Revel in the delicacy, the softness, the faint reminder of crisp sea breezes, the mouth-filling richness that manages to be light at the same time.
Try the next bite with a TINY speck of wasabi (Japanese green horseradish paste), a tiny dab of soy sauce. Note the contrast in flavors.
In no time at all you'll yearn for the next bite.
soon, you'll spurn the grocery store boxes.
In fact, by December you may be finding rice and nori a distraction, and asking Santa for nothing more (or less) than a few wonderfully rich, butter-soft morsels of raw toro (fatty belly tuna) in your stocking. If you don't know it, try it. If you don't like it, avoid it. If you like it, enjoy it. Never try to push food, that is a task for parents. Yeah, I don't like sushi either! Americans are conditioned to think raw animal of any kind is bad. Sushi isn't an acquired taste: my favorite food from the first bite! All you have to do is to do a little study and a little thinking about it to realize that good things are eaten raw all over the world (and in the US, too) and to realize you aren't eating organs, but muscle. It's meat.
Oh, and it's good. The raw sliver of fish - tuna, salmon - on a dollop of sticky rice did not make me throw up; salty soy awash with pungent wasabi was the only taste, the rice and fish bland - there wasn't any taste to like, to acquire, to crave for. Sushi still tastes like bland whatever's on top; and I can take it or leave it. Nothing to like, or dislike. I suspect it's the pretty garnishing/presentation and the oil-free health thing that appeals. I've stopped trying to love it even though 'foreign' sushi joints spice it up with mayonnaise, salad cream whatever. Waste of time! I'll stick to dimsum. don't!
There'll be more left for us....