The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice

by Trevor Corson

  Until recently, rice producers coated rice with white talc powder to protect it during shipment. But talc is inedible and may even cause cancer, so cooks had to wash the rice thoroughly before use. Most rice is now talc free. In the United States, the FDA encourages producers to powder white rice with vitamins instead, and some states require it. Health authorities discourage people from washing rice because it sends the vitamins down the drain. But it’s hard to tell the good white powder from the bad, so people have continued to wash their rice.

  As if in an arms race, rice enrichers have developed rinse-proof technologies. They lacquer vitamins onto 0.5 percent of the rice grains with elaborate coating processes and stealthily mix them in with the rest of the rice. One company has even developed man-made vitamin pellets that look exactly like grains of rice, intended to trick people into eating their vitamins.

  In Japan, producers do not usually add vitamins to white rice, and in the United States, the rapid spread of sushi has created a whole new industry: premium Japanese rice, grown in America and often sold under Japanese brand names. A few of the mass-market brands are enriched with vitamins; most are not. However, there is another reason rice still ends up covered with white powder and why it needs to be rinsed.

  No rice starts out white. The rice plant is a kind of grass, and each grain of rice is actually a tiny fruit—which is to say, the plant version of an egg. The hull is the egg’s shell, made mostly of the same hard silica found in rocks. Under the hull is the brown inner husk, or bran, and under that a super-thin layer of oils, enzymes, and vitamins. Inside is the egg’s food supply.

  In the modern world, rice is run through high-tech milling machines after harvest. First, steel rollers encased in rubber are used to break off the hull. At this point, all rice is brown. Next, to make the rice white, fine wire brushes scrape off the inner husk, or bran, along with the oils and enzymes. After polishing, there’s a dent in the end of each grain. That’s where the embryo used to live.

  The milling process leaves behind a bit of starch as a fine powder on the rice. This leftover starch creates too much stickiness in cooked rice, which is why sushi chefs rinse it off. A few brands of rice go through an additional step, a process trademarked Kapika. A special Japanese machine rubs the grains together so they polish each other clean. Kapika rice keeps longer and doesn’t require as much rinsing.

  The problem with all this processing is that removing the inner husk, or bran layer, also removes the vitamins. That is why health officials have advocated re-enriching white rice. An alternative would be to encourage people just to eat brown rice.

  Most health-conscious people assume that brown rice was the form of rice that humans originally consumed, but that’s not the case. Throughout most of rice-growing history, people pounded rice grains in a wooden mortar with a mallet to break open the shell. The Japanese built oversize mallets that looked like seesaws with a heavy pounding head at one end. A person stood on the other end, leveraging the mallet up and down with his body weight.

  In practice, the effort required to break open the hull of the rice grains also broke off most of the inner husk, so eating brown rice wasn’t even an option until the invention of modern milling. That, and not a preference for luxury or purity, is why white rice has been eaten for most of history. Fortunately, traditional pounding techniques left a bit of the bran on. Average “white” rice was actually “slightly beige” rice, and it retained some vitamins.

  That said, rich people in Japan and other countries preferred the taste of bright white rice, and so they paid extra to have their rice polished. Sadly for them, the Japanese diet contained little besides rice bran to supply vitamin B1. People who ate polished rice condemned themselves to emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weight loss, heart failure, and even death—the results of beriberi, or vitamin B1 deficiency. About 350 years ago, as more Japanese acquired wealth and moved from the countryside to cities, the consumption of highly polished rice increased. So did recorded incidences of beriberi. One food historian reports that for a time, it was considered Japan’s national disease.

  But aside from the lack of vitamins and certain minerals, white rice can provide all the basic protein and starch that a human needs to survive, and it beats out wheat handily. A person who weighs 150 pounds would have to eat five or six small bowls of rice three times a day in order to survive on rice alone. That’s a lot. But if he tried to survive on bread, he’d have to eat 72 slices of it a day.

  Takumi dumped the rinse water and added fresh water for another rinsing. Eight or nine rinses later the milling starch had washed away and the water ran clear.

  At this stage, some sushi chefs soak their rice in cold water for as long as 30 to 60 minutes. The chefs at Hama Hermosa preferred to run cold water from the tap over the rice for just ten minutes or so. This achieved both a quick soak and a thorough rinse. Then the chefs would pour the rice into a colander to drain. Each grain of rice continued to absorb the moisture on its surface, like a tiny sponge.

  Takumi’s hands had turned red from the frigid rinse water. Anything but cold water would cause the rice to soften too much before cooking. A sushi chef in L.A. named Katsuo Niiyama remembered the first two years of his apprenticeship in Japan as nothing but frigid water and freezing hands. Every morning at 6:00 a.m. he fetched buckets of cold water and scrubbed everything in the restaurant. Then he rinsed nine batches of rice, each batch requiring multiple rinses in cold water. On most days he did something wrong, which earned him a slap in the face from the chef. Some days the chef chased him with a stick.

  Takumi looked at the clock again. Barely two hours remained before customers would start to arrive. Today was a Friday and the restaurant might be busy. Takumi would have to prepare two full batches of sushi rice. Nearby, Zoran rushed around doing prep work. Takumi could tell that Zoran, out of the corner of his eye, was watching him.

  Japan’s native religion, Shinto, starts with the belief that everything—trees, foxes, fish, samurai swords—possesses its own spirit. Takumi abided by this belief. For example, he lavished care on his sushi knives because a skilled craftsman had poured his heart and soul into their creation, and so they had acquired spirits of their own.

  Rice seems especially sacred because it is Japan’s staple food. Sushi chefs call it shari, a Buddhist term that refers to tiny pieces of the Buddha’s bones. According to Japanese folk tradition, each grain of rice contains not just one spirit but seven. In his two batches of sushi rice, totaling roughly 20 pounds, Takumi was currently responsible for the fate of some three and a half million tiny gods.

  All rice, whether it houses deities or not, belongs to a single species of plant, with the sole exception of one other species eaten only in West Africa. The primary species has more than 100,000 varieties, but these fall into two categories, Indica and Japonica. Japonica rices are shorter and stickier, and include sushi rice.

  Sushi rice is sticky because it’s hopelessly disorganized. Most plants store solar energy inside seeds and grains, as little energy bars of sugar—glucose. They pack these energy bars inside the seed or grain in one of two ways. The first way is neat and orderly, and results in nice, straight strands of starch, each strand containing 1,000 pieces of sugar.

  The second way is to fling the energy bars into tangled, irregular, prickly heaps of starch, each containing anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 pieces of sugar. Sushi rice contains more of this second, disorganized type of starch than do most other kinds of rice. The prickly heaps make the rice stick together.

  Average sushi restaurants use a medium-grain version of Japonica. Each grain is oblong, two or three times longer than it is wide. Because of its shape, medium-grain rice does not form itself into sushi quite so willingly. But it is less expensive. The California Sushi Academy stocked medium-grain rice for the students in the classroom.

  High-end sushi restaurants pay extra for short-grain rice. Each grain is more round than oblong. Hama Hermosa purchased its prem
ium Japanese short-grain rice from American farmers who grew it just 400 miles away, in the Sacramento Valley of northern California.

  Takumi draped a Teflon net inside the bowl of a large commercial rice cooker. The Teflon mesh was to prevent the rice from sticking to the bowl. Then he poured in the short-grain rice he’d washed. It sounded like rain.

  Sushi apprentices in Japan spend a couple of years on rice alone because preparing it is so tricky. Traditional chefs consider the rice more important than the fish. The goal is grains that are firm, plump, and sticky. Myriad factors affect the results.

  Although each grain of rice originally contained a living embryo and skin, the part that remains after polishing—the embryo’s food supply—is a mass of dead cells containing stored starches embedded in a grid of proteins. Good growing seasons can be bad for sushi chefs because high-starch grains can break open during cooking, resulting in mush.

  The most favored sushi rice in Japan is a variety called Koshihikari. The starch in the core of the grain is more condensed than in other varieties, and the walls of its storage cells are thicker. Both factors contribute to a firmer and denser texture, qualities that sushi connoisseurs consider crucial. Koshihikari grains also contain aromatic fatty acids, providing flavor and a moister sensation in the mouth.

  In Japan alone, farmers have cultivated at least 2,000 varieties of rice. Like winemakers and coffee sellers, serious sushi chefs often blend different varieties, and different harvests, to achieve a unique texture and flavor. At Hama Hermosa, the rice that Takumi was preparing for dinner was a blend of Koshihikari and one other variety.

  Regardless of the type of rice, sushi chefs generally prefer rice that has aged for a few months after harvest because it’s drier. To sushi purists, perhaps the most important factor is not the type of sushi rice but how it was dried. Most Japanese rice today is force-dried with hot air before milling. The purists complain that this causes the surface of the grains to become pasty. When vinegar is added to force-dried rice after cooking, the pasty surface of the grains can form a membrane, blocking absorption of the vinegar. The very best rice is left to dry naturally in the sun.

  After letting the rice drain, Takumi’s next step was to add water for cooking. But before adding the water, Takumi did something that might be considered cheating.

  Traditionally, sushi chefs cook their sushi rice with a splash of sake and a strip of kelp to add flavor. Instead, Takumi reached for a maroon can of white powder manufactured by the Otsuka Chemical Industry Corporation. This substance, known by its trade name Miora, came into commercial use as a rice additive in Japan after World War II. When labeled for sale in the United States, a sticker on the can declares in English that the ingredients are simply “potato starch and glucose.” But the Japanese ingredients list includes other items—enzymes called amylase and protease, plus “kelp flavor.”

  Amylase breaks starch down into glucose. Protease breaks protein down into amino acids. Cooking with Miora creates rice with unnaturally high levels of glucose and amino acids, which makes the rice sweeter and gives it more of the tasty flavor of umami. As for “kelp flavor,” that’s usually just code for MSG.

  Rice cooked with Miora makes people want to return to their favorite sushi restaurants again and again. Because of all the glucose, some doctors worry that the body will convert more of this rice to fat. In using the Miora, Takumi was simply following standard practice at Hama Hermosa. It’s likely that more sushi restaurants use Miora than anyone would like to admit.

  Takumi measured the proper amount of water and poured it into the cooker bowl. Sushi chefs cook their rice with less water than if they were cooking rice for regular use. Too much moisture softens the grains, makes them too sticky, and prevents them from absorbing the vinegar mixture the chef adds after cooking. But too little water also prevents the rice from absorbing the vinegar because the starches in the core of the grain will reharden before the vinegar gets a chance to penetrate.

  Takumi switched on the rice cooker. While the first batch of rice began to boil, he set out a low-sided cypress tub. He poured in enough water to cover the bottom and left it to soak. The cypress had to be wet before he dumped in the cooked rice. Otherwise, the absorbent wood would suck the moisture from the rice. He checked the clock again. Time was running out.

  When the rice had finished cooking Takumi emptied the water from the cypress tub. Then he yanked the rice out of the cooker by the edges of the Teflon net and lugged it toward the tub. Steam billowed around his forearms. He flipped the mesh bag upside down into the tub in a huge cloud of steam.

  Small clumps of rice still stuck to the Teflon net. Tens of thousands of tiny rice gods were in peril of not making it into the tub. Takumi started to pick the grains of rice off one by one.

  Zoran dove in and snatched the net from Takumi’s hands.

  “Come on, don’t worry about it!” Zoran barked. Zoran tossed the net in the sink. Takumi glanced at the clock. There was other work to be done.

  He washed the second batch of rice while the first batch cooled. If he added the vinegar too soon after cooking, the rice wouldn’t soak it up. But if he let the rice sit too long, it would start to harden and wouldn’t absorb the vinegar, either. At the right moment, he returned and poured Hama Hermosa’s recipe of sushi vinegar over the cooling rice. In a tiny office off the kitchen, the recipe was taped to the wall: seven parts rice vinegar, five parts sugar, one part salt.

  In the 1600s, in the area around Kyoto, the recipe for “quick sushi” came to include not just vinegar in the rice but sugar as well. It tasted good, and along with the vinegar, the sugar helped prevent the rice from spoiling for a few days. Sugar molecules love water. When water is in short supply, they suck it right out of the bodies of bacteria and the bacteria die. That’s why fruit jellied with lots of sugar is called “preserves.”

  In Japan, the sweetness of sushi rice has varied by region and era. When sushi spread to what is now Tokyo in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the people there preferred their sushi rice tart and tangy.

  After years of wartime deprivation during and after World War II, most Japanese developed more of a sweet tooth, and even Tokyo sushi became sweeter. But as prosperity returned, so did the preference for tart sushi. Nowadays, as you travel from Tokyo toward Kyoto, the sushi is sweeter and sweeter. When you reach Kyoto, the sushi rice is about three times sweeter than it is back in Tokyo.

  One of the most venerated Tokyo sushi chefs today, Jir Ono, ads almost no sugar to his sushi rice. The sugar, he says, makes people feel full too quickly, before they’ve had a chance to sample a sufficient variety of fish. Too much sugar can also overwhelm the delicate flavors of some of the best fish for sushi.

  In general, Tokyo sushi chefs take tartness seriously. Like a martial-arts dojo or a school of tea ceremony, each sushi bar follows techniques handed down from the founding masters of the lineage to which it belongs. The most closely guarded secret is usually the ratio of vinegar to salt in the sushi rice. It’s said that a master chef can tell the lineage of a sushi bar simply by tasting its rice.

  In the United States, sushi has Kyoto-style sweetness. Sushi chefs have noticed that when they add more sugar they get extra compliments. In a sense, the fundamental taste of sushi is no different from the fundamental taste of America’s other favorite Asian food. Chinese restaurants serve sweet-and-sour pork; sushi restaurants essentially serve sweet-and-sour rice.

  Takumi folded the sweet vinegar mix into the rice with a bamboo paddle. Zoran swooped in again.

  “Okay, okay,” Zoran said, “now, shari-kiri!” Literally, it meant “cutting the Buddha’s bones.” Zoran motioned with his hand.

  Takumi nodded and sliced through the rice with the edge of the paddle, breaking up clumps. When he stopped to let the rice cool further, Zoran snatched up the paddle. He arched his body around the tub, grasping the edge with his free hand, and flipped patches of the cooling rice upside down with brisk twists of his wrist, circ
ling the tub as he worked. That way the underside of the rice could cool and release excess moisture as well.

  Takumi wandered about the kitchen, a quizzical expression on his face. He couldn’t find the maroon can of magic white powder. He turned to Zoran.

  “Do you know where,” he asked in his broken English, “is Miora?”

  “You should have put it back where it belonged!” Zoran yelled, his back hunched over his work. “Get some sleep!”

  Zoran himself rarely slept more than four hours a night. He flew to a shelf and grabbed the can. “Is this what you were looking for?”

  Takumi half-nodded, half-bowed. “Thank you.”

  Takumi readied the second batch of rice for cooking and checked the clock. He packed the first batch of sushi rice into a couple of insulated canisters, laid damp kitchen towels over the rice, tightened the heavy lids, and lugged them to the front sushi bar. The second batch of rice would be used at the longer sushi bar in the back room. Most nights, Toshi opened only the sushi bar in the front dining room for business. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, he opened up the back sushi bar as well.

  When the second batch of rice had cooked, Takumi repeated the seasoning procedure, racing the clock. By the time he’d finished and washed the wooden tub, a wad of discarded rice had accumulated in the basket drain under the row of sinks. Takumi didn’t want to think about how many divinities lay there dying. He pulled on his chef jacket and hurried to the front dining room.

  The entire restaurant staff had convened for the daily staff meeting. Several of the chefs were Japanese. There was a Korean trainee. Next to Zoran stood a young white woman. Her name was Fie Kruse.