Actor123 wrote:
> OK, so I've delved in and tried a few times to prepare homemade sushi
> and would love to get better at it. I've got fairly simple sushi
> tastes - salmon rolls, tuna rollls, sometimes spicy, sometimes not. I
> encountered problems when preparing these rolls at home, though, in
> that the taste didn't come out right. After the first failure I
> thought it was my rice preparation technique, but I've altered the
> rice recipe several times and no luck - basically it comes out tasting
> really bland. I know tuna and salmon aren't the inherently tastiest
> fish in and of themselves, but at a sushi bar I always have been
> pleased at the taste and most times don't even need wasabi or ginger
> unless I want it. At home, however, it was like eating... nothing.
>
> I bought sashimi-grade salmon and tuna from a local Japanese
> supermarket, and even tried a different market so that wasn't it. Its
> almost as if the sushi bars prepare the fish in some way (in some sort
> of brine? vinegar?) to bring out the taste a bit more. Is there some
> secret to this? I would have thought these would be the easiest
> things to prepare at home, but I'm not having any luck and am
> stumped.

One thing you might try is to age the fish slightly. Did you make the
sushi with fish the day you got it from the store? Tuna can benefit from
a little aging, but obviously not too much. Also the quality fish that a
sushi bar gets may not compare with what you can get at a Japanese market.
Lets just say the restaurants get the better or best cuts, and the rest gets
sold off to the markets.

If you find it bland eating it as sashimi, as you would in a resturant..
then its a quality issue from the market.

--
Dan