Ever since I bought an instant pot, I haven’t made sushi rice any other way. It produced
absolutely perfect rice with the least amount of work.
Of course, the same exact method works in any rice cooker. If you don’t have one and
want a stove top version, check out the link below this video. Ok, so first we need good
rice. I realize that you can buy something called sushi rice in every supermarket these
days, but please realize that not all rice is created equal. Even the most expensive
rice is not that pricey (compared to say meat or fish) and it tastes so much better than
the cheapest kind.
Koshihikari is a popular Japanese rice variety. I’ve tried it from many different brands
and it is always good. If you are not an expert on Japanese cuisine and don’t know what
else to look for on the package, look for that. I really like this brand. I get it at
Wegman’s, but it’s also available on Amazon. I’ll link to a few good brands on Amazon
in the description below.
I went back and forth between measuring rice by volume and by weight. In my previous sushi
rice video, I did it by weight, but I’ve noticed that in real life I rarely weigh my
rice. The good news is that neither rice, nor water are compressible the way flour is,
so measuring them by volume isn’t a problem. Since I make so much rice, I like a formula
that is easy to remember and easy to scale and sushi rice by volume couldn’t be easier.
It’s 1 to 1. So for 1 and a half cups of rice (scooped and leveled, no heaping cups
please), I’ll need 1 and a half cups of water. My measuring cups have a handy dandy
half way line, so I can get a pretty accurate half cup with a full cup measure, but if your
measuring cups don’t have that feature, I don’t recommend eyeballing half a cup.
Get the half cup measure and do it right.
Put the rice into your instant pot insert and cover it with cold water by about an inch.
Gently rub the rice grains for 30 seconds or so with your hands to get rid of excess
starch. Washing rice before cooking is a must. Otherwise the rice will come out too starchy
and the water measurement will be way off. 1 to 1 ratio assumes you are starting with
wet rice. When the water looks milky white, pour it off. When I used to make sushi rice
only on occasion, I would dump it into a fine mesh strainer to drain it because I was worried
that it would all fall into the sink, but if you slow down toward the end, the rice
stays put with no problems. Don’t sweat each drop at this point because we are going
to rinse one more time.
Add fresh water, rub the rice one more time, and pour it off. Though I’ll confess that
when I am in a rush, I skip the second wash. Whether you wash your rice once or twice,
on the last wash you need to get all the water out. Once your pot is parallel to the counter,
don’t tip it further or the rice will fall out. Just let the water pour out slowly until
the stream turns into drips, and the drips slow down. Now we need to add the water that
we’ll cook the rice in. That’s the water we need to measure. I use the same dry measuring
cup for water that I use for rice. If I fill it to the very top, it’s quite accurate.
Swirl the pot a few times to distribute the rice evenly.
Wipe the lip of your pot to make sure you’ll get a good seal with your lid. Put the insert
into the Instant Pot. Make sure the gasket is in the lid and that the pressure release
knob is set to “Sealing”. Screw on the lid and press the “Rice” button. Keep
warm automatically comes on, but I turn it off because I like to dress my rice shortly
after it’s done. If you want to cook your rice later, after you press the rice button,
press the “delay start” button and enter how much time the instant pot should wait
before it starts cooking. It’s way better to delay the cooking than to keep the rice
on Keep Warm cycle for hours.
It usually takes me around 30-40 minutes from the moment I start the cooking until the rice
is done. It takes 10-15 minutes for the pot to pressurize. Once it’s pressurized, it
starts to count down 12 minutes on low pressure. Once those 12 minutes are up, your rice is
NOT done. You need to wait for the pressure to drop naturally, which will take another
10-15 minutes. If you open the pot as soon as 12 minutes are up, you’ll get undercooked
rice.
While our rice is cooking, let’s make the seasoning vinegar. You don’t need to dress
this rice with anything if you don’t want to. I serve it undressed as a side dish all
the time. But for sushi dishes and poke bowls I really like to dress it. After all, “sushi”
means vinegared rice. We’ll need 50 grams of rice wine vinegar (make sure you get plain
and not “seasoned” vinegar for this). 25 grams of granulated sugar, and 6 grams
of salt.
I do it by weight so that I don’t have to dirty measuring spoons and also because 50/25/6
is easy for me to remember, but if volume is easier, do that. Just keep in mind that
if you are measuring salt by volume you’ll need different number of teaspoons depending
on which salt you use because different salts have different crystal shape, size, and density.
Mix the vinegar, sugar, and salt together, but don’t worry if they don’t dissolve
immediately. By the time your rice finishes cooking, they’ll be one big happy family
or at least close to it.
When the pressure indicator falls back down, your rice is ready to dress. If you missed
the moment when the pressure indicator dropped, don’t worry, your rice can happily wait
in a sealed pot for quite some time after the pressure indicator falls. Open the pot,
but be careful not to pour the water that condensed on the lid back into the pot. Keep
it in the lid and discard. Give the vinegar a final stir until everything dissolves and
dump it into the rice. Use a flat big spoon (I use the spatula that came with my instant
pot) to cut through the rice. The goal is to separate the grains without smooshing them.
If we stir aggressively using a circular motion we’ll end up with a mush.
Once in a while scoop up the rice from around the sides and keep on cutting. When you don’t
see anymore clumps of rice, and the vinegar is evenly distributed and absorbed, you are
done. When in doubt, taste the rice. I taste it even when I am not in doubt because who
can resist freshly made sushi rice. If you are not using the rice immediately, cover
it with a damp paper towel and it can wait for up to 2 hours. But I like to use my sushi
rice while it’s still very warm.
My kids’ favorite weekday breakfast is this rice with sliced raw salmon and the soy reduction.
In case you think I am some good Mom who wakes up at 5am to make this stuff, sorry to disillusion
you. I am a lazy bum when it comes to breakfast. The rice gets started the night before. The
salmon is sliced, portioned, and frozen about once a month and I just need to move it from
the freezer to the fridge the night before. The soy reduction lasts in the fridge forever
so I make it, like, twice a year. The morning part of all this is as easy as cheerios with
milk, but it does require more planning. That’s why it doesn’t happen every morning. By
the way, the link for my soy reduction is below.
Next week we’ll put our sushi rice to work and make my favorite summer meal -- the poke
bowl. So stay tuned, don’t forget to subscribe, hit that little bell button for notifications
and if you are ever in the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.