The “rule” is to dip fishside into the soy sauce if you want soy, not the rice.
There is no “fishside” for maki sushi.
To be clear, the sushi that I adore is nigiri. I barely consider maki to be sushi at all, though I’ll sometimes buy it at the grocery store. But I don’t know any top-tier sushi restaurants that serve it (I could be very much mistaken about that, but truly, I personally don’t know any). Although there was one that, at the end of many rounds of omakase (Japanese sushi “tasting menu”) would chop up some raw tuna, mix it with sushi rice and various herbs and other ingredients, and wrap it in a delicately crisp warm cone of seaweed. It was handed to you by the chef (this was strictly a sushi-bar thing) and you had to eat it immediately or it would lose its textures and flavours, but it was a wonderful way to end the meal.
Ah, that’s my bias showing for nigiri.
(I guess with normal maki you’re supposed to dip the seaweed part. I don’t know what you do for inside out rolls. There seems to be an idea that you’re not supposed to soy sauce your rice. There’s lots of weird little “rules” for sushi, but do what you like.)
A few related points here, and speaking as someone who makes quite a lot of non-traditional sushi at home (more on that in a sec). So first, if you’re using a lot of soy sauce, then yeah, it’s like having a burger/steak with a ton of ketchup/A1 - you probably don’t care for some element of the taste (and it could be quality, freshness, or flavor) and you want to drown it. Which is exactly what my wife did until she realized she just didn’t like meat, which is fine, but figure out the why first. Not that it’s wrong to enjoy soy sauce, or even soy sauce on sushi, just why bother with the expense if it’s something you actually aren’t interested in.
Second point, and a second reason to not use too much (as well as @pulykamell’s rule), is that if the rice gets more than a touch of soy, the nigiri (not so much maki) will structurally fail. And that’s not good eats. I once overdipped AND rice side down, and the whole affair fell apart as I was lifting it to my lips. Epic fail on my part.
So, back to lox and my earlier comment about non-traditional sushi. I often make maki at home using the earlier mentioned end cuts of nova style lox. Since it’s going into a roll, the long, slim cuts that are sadly lacking in the trim pieces mean absolutely nothing. So a decent sushi rice, sugar, vinegar, the lox and either some finely diced red or green onions, and voila, a treat that makes the most of cheap lox and my desire for sushi.
Yeah, that’s what I was doing in my boorish days, which is what got the sushi chef to waving his knife around! That’s also when I discovered that if you ask, the chef at a good sushi bar will happily brush a little soy sauce over the top of each omakase serving so you don’t have to do the dipping – though perhaps these customs may vary from place to place. Another advantage of having the chef do the soy brushing is that he’ll know not to do it when it’s not required. Maybe the reason they don’t do it routinely is that some people may not be fond of soy sauce, or may be averse to the huge amounts of sodium in it.
What’s boorish is telling people they’re eating sushi all wrong when that’s the way they like it. Some people just can’t abide the fishiness. Some people can’t eat fish of any kind or even seaweed. I don’t much care for saba because of the fishiness, although I love most of the rest. And I eve (gasp!) prefer extra wasabi on some of it. After 40 years of eating sushi, I know what I like and how I like it. I give others the same respect.
This is temakizushi, which literally means “hand-roll sushi”. It’s actually one of the standard types.
It was my (Japanese) mom’s favorite.
Has anyone ever heard of a different home brine?
Fair enough. There certainly can be an aspect of arrogance in telling someone who knows what they like that they’re doing it all wrong. Most of the time the only thing that matters is one’s own tastes.
But there’s another side to this coin. I definitely appreciated an obviously excellent sushi chef expressing dismay at how I was ruining his carefully crafted creations, in which he took justifiable pride, by drowning them in soy sauce. In addition to that, sushi (nigiri sushi, specifically) is a special case because it’s a very special food. The reason the wasabi is already in it is the same reason that sushi is sometimes anointed with incredibly intense sauces or mixed with certain herbs, spices, or garnishes – the presentation is meant to be a complete, harmonious balance, to be eaten and enjoyed as presented, each individual luscious nigiri popped into the mouth whole (a friend of mine was seriously chided by the chef for nibbling on one). Also the same reason that sea urchin is sometimes served in a kind of spicy roll (the one exception I know of where a good sushi bar does something resembling maki) and sometimes in the form of a delicate nigiri – it depends on the chef’s judgment about the flavour and delicacy of the sea urchin he has on hand.
As a sushi chef once informed me, his job is to craft the perfect sushi; my job is just to enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed. Sushi is truly a culinary art form.
Yes, thank you, now that you mention it, I recall it being referred to as a “hand-roll”.
That restaurant has since closed, but not for lack of business. One of the chef-owners opened up a larger place in a better location. And then another of their chefs did one better, set off on his own and opened an even more elegant sushi bar – Shoushin Sushi – which I highly recommend to anyone who finds themselves in the Toronto area and has anywhere from $700 to $1000 that they don’t need and is looking for fantastic sushi or sashimi for two. Go easy on the soy sauce. 
I will say though, that even though I was the one being told I was “eating it wrong”, I don’t mind someone pointing out that pickled ginger isn’t intended to be used that way. I mean, this is the Straight Dope, pointing crap like that out is sort of the point of this place.
But yeah, I’m going to continue to eat it the way I do because I didn’t start to like sushi until I did.
I just wanted to add a point that @needscoffee might find amusing, or at least interesting. And apologies for the whole sushi digression to a thread about smoking fish. I’m just a big sushi fan and got caught up in the first mention of it.
If you look at the Shoushin Sushi website I cited in my previous post, and go to the detailed menu, the Obsession Perfection Omakase is noted as being served “at the chef’s discretion”. The owner-chef Jackie Lin himself explained to me what this means. It means that he will only serve it to customers he knows well and that he knows will fully appreciate it. He will not serve it to random strangers waving around piles of money. He would under no circumstances, for instance, ever serve it to Donald Trump, who eats his steaks well-done with big globs of ketchup.
Is this disrespectful arrogance, or is it the justifiable quest of a true artist for perfection in both creation and appreciation? Having his craft appreciated is more important to him than money. I think that has to be respected, and it becomes more understandable when one learns about the long, hard years of apprenticeship it takes to work your way up to being a truly great sushi chef.
Not a problem. Eventually the recommendations for cold smokers will come pouring in, and my followups will follow up, and this whole sushi thing will be long forgotten.
I mucked around with some different recipes but they never seemed to pull enough water out to get the texture I wanted. I’d use the dry brine and stack the salmon in a 6" deep restaurant pan. By the next day the pan was full of liquid and I knew that liquid was pulled from the fish. The pieces would stand on end and be firm like a dry aged steak. After that I would rinse the salmon and dry it on the racks for 24 hours in the fridge. You want the meat to get a shiny and tacky layer on top before it goes in the smoker. Some brine recipes have garlic or onion powder. I’m sure you could use citrus peel of something.
I just want to reiterate because it was the biggest part of the learning curve in my experience. The brine gets you the texture. Air drying gets you the shiny tacky skin. The smoke is just the flavor. You’re never going to “fix” the fish in the smoker. It’s never going to get closer to store bought in the smoker. It will get dry and sooty.
Agreed.
On my 50th birthday I went to San Francisco and my GF took me to an omokase restaurant. It is basically chef’s choice, you get what they give you and I don’t remember if we were even given ginger and soy sauce. You ate it as it was prepared.
It was outstandingly good food! Just…amazing. Also, not cheap at all. It was very expensive. But wow…once you know sushi can be like that it is an eyeopener.
(And, FTR, I LOVE ginger too.)