Hey folks,
does the fish used by sushi restaurants differ in any way from supermarket fish? Is it fresher, or supplied by a special service?
What’s to stop me from going to my local supermarket and buying a large chunk of salmon, dicing it and enjoying a sashimi dinner?
Nothing. People do that all the time. Yes, sushi restaurants use very fresh fish (or fresh-frozen fish), but if it smells OK, and if you know your fish well enough to pick out a bad one, then homemade sushi is fine.
However, supermarkets don’t usually have fish of that quality; you’re better off going to a fish market when it first opens, or down by the docks if you live in a fishing town. Check out consumerreports.com for their advice on how to buy fish (sorry, this is a subscription site, but it’s worth it).
The fish used at restaurants is of different type and quality from that sold at supermarkets. My hubby is now working at a fish shop and the difference in the fish is amazing. For the tuna, anyway (that’s the only “sushi-grade” he’s gotten), it is a totally different kind of tuna than that sold at the grocery. Look for “Yellowfin,” but there are even different types of Yellowfin. The hubby doesn’t advise making sushi with the other fish he gets in, although it is still fresher than the supermarket’s, such as grouper, tilapia, mahi, salmon, etc.
If you branch out from tuna (it’s the only raw fish I’ve used in homemade sushi but still good enough for me), and you’re looking for something like baby octopus or just some sushi-grade snapper, ask if your local fish shop can special order it. If you don’t have anything around you but supermarkets, I would recommend using no raw fish at all. Sushi with that fake crab meat or no meat at all is pretty darn good, too!
Now, making the rice . . .
I don’t know where you live but around here (San Jose CA) we have a couple of big Japanese supermarkets that sell anything you need for sushi/sashimi all in nicely trimmed and wrapped packages. Though if you don’t read Japanese, you had better know what you want by sight or corner a bilingual employee. If you have a big Asian population around you, you may want to take a look in the yellow pages.
The only thing I’ll buy at my local Safeway is their sushi-grade ahi, and even then I sear it rather than eat it totally raw. The fish-guy there told me that particular store goes through 200lbs of salmon daily with fresh deliveries most days (not weekends) but I still wouldn’t consider eating it raw.
I just visit a fish market & ask for raw tuna for sushi. If they have any, they can sell it to me.