it would be sashimi other wise

Literally what sushi is. Raw fish is sashimi.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Pretty sure fish isn’t rice. Lol

That’d be sashimi.

It's astonishing how many people can't figure this out.

Raw fish = Sashimi

Raw fish with rice = Nigiri

Rice rolled with seaweed and stuffed with other ingredients (fish and/or vegetables) = Sushi

"Today I learned something that literally anyone who's ever looked at a piece of sushi knows"

Yep. Sushi may or may not have raw fish, as the rice is the defining part. Another thing you may not know is that the nori (dried seaweed) being under the rice in a maki (sushi roll) is an American/western thing. Japanese style maki has the nori on the outside.

Reading the article is interesting: Sushi's only consistent ingredient is rice - since it can be made with fish, octopus, vegetables, fruits or eggs - and it's all sushi. However, the origins of sushi come from pickling excess fish with fermenting rice, which would preserve the fish. The rice was discarded and the resulting fish was called sushi (literally translates to "sour tasting") - so despite rice being the important part of the dish, the word comes from a pickled fish.

(for those too lazy to read it: that picked fish was eaten for hundreds of years before, in the 16-800s, it started to be served pressed into a mound of rice. It wasn't until the 1820s that the pickled fish was replaced with fresh fish and the nigirizushi we know today was born courtesy of chef Hanaya Yohei.)

prefer it on the outside usually, but honestly its all good

what about a piece of nigiri with the tiny band of nori around it like a belt?

me too, although i have to admit i did just learn this recently

I coulda told you that for free

> Raw fish with rice = Nigiri

Doesn't have to be raw fish, can be virtually any topping.

> Rice rolled with seaweed and stuffed with other ingredients (fish and/or vegetables) = Sushi

That's not "sushi", it's maki.

Nigiri and maki are both types of sushi; they're just abbreviations for the full names "nigirizushi" and "makizushi".

I could go for some sushis and sashimis....

Ackchyually…

Take about 20% off there bud

You're right, Nigiri can be with anything, avocado or tamago for instance. I did not know that about both being types of sushi though, learn something every day.

You're in the wrong conversation.

Why don't you come up and sashimi sometime?

Sure. As the OP discovered, the rice is the important part of "sushi" and everything that uses it is called sushi as far as I know. You just stick a different word on the front to describe the kind of sushi it is, then in informal speech or over time, the suffix gets dropped.

Where does onigiri fit into this schema?

The first time I had sushi with properly done rice it was a revelation.

Still nigiri, the nori is just there to hold it when using a topping that can't bind well to the rice, like tamago egg, or fish eggs.

Well onigiri isn't sushi, so it doesn't.

I was curious about the words, not the food. It looks like the base word nigiru means to clench or roll in the hands.

harder to eat it with your hands when the rice is on the outside.

> I was curious about the words, not the food

Oh hah, sorry. I can't think of anything like that offhand, but another example of the same sort of Japanese approach to food naming is the "yaki" suffix which means cooking but usually means frying when used in the name of the food, giving you yakiniku (fried meat), yakitori (fried chicken), yakisoba (fried soba noodles), etc.

ETA: yakitori is more like grilled chicken than fried, which is called karage, but.. can't win 'em all.

Which you can learn by just looking at it?

I always get annoyed by the "sushi" fusion dishes that don't even have rice.. like.. brah did you even google the word sushi

​

my last experience of this was a spicy crab sushi roll where the rice was completely replaced by fried green plantain. tastes great, but its not sushi...

yeah, who doesn't know this already? buncha idiot losers, not knowing about sushi. i'm astonished at how little people know about sushi. sushi was originally raw chicken on a piece of green paper, it's incredible how stupid most people are about real sushi. sashimi is the orange stuff you see in chinese buffets next to the "lo mein", whatever the heck that is. people are just making up different food groups like we don't already know what a hamburger is. like the fish group and the chinese food group. it's nuts, can you believe this?

finally, someone who gets it

Interesting- thanks!

Anyone who has eaten sushi: no shit.

Zushi or sushi literally means sour rice

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