(Image by takedahrs from Pixabay)

Answering sushi related questions on Quora was the beginning of my writing career. I’ve written over 300 sushi and food-related articles on Quora since 2016.

I realized that there were many sushi eaters out there who did not know some of the basic things about sushi, like where it came from and what sushi is. I also discovered there was a lot of misunderstanding about sushi and Japanese cuisine. Many non-Japanese people thought eating Fugu meant automatic death when no one (or only a few in several years) dies from eating Fugu in Japan.

I’ve been a sushi chef for almost twenty years, and I’ve learned a few things about sushi since then. Like many of you, I did not know most of the things in this article when I started my training.

Here are some of the most common things you probably did not know about sushi.

1. Sushi is not raw fish.

(Vegetable sushi, image by hot-sun from Pixabay)

By definition, sushi is seasoned rice with ingredients. It is said the word sushi came from Su Meshi, vinegar rice. Sushi rice is called “Shari” in Japanese. “Neta” is an ingredient. Fish happens to be the most popular Sushi Neta. Some traditional non-fish Netas includes Tamago (Egg custard), Oshinko (Daikon Pickles), Cucumber, Ume (pickled plum), Kanpyō (dried gourd strips) Spinach, Shitake mushroom to name a few. In recent years, we have seen “newcomers” like mac and cheese sushi, hamburger sushi, beef sushi and Banana Sushi introduce by one of the Kaiten Sushi restaurant, Kura Sushi.

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