You've never eaten real Edomae sushi, have you? Me neither!
December 29, 2022
Combined with the image that Japanese food is healthy, sushi has become popular all over the world.
But is sushi really healthy?
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Sushi originated in Southeast Asia and was originally a preserved food made by pickling rice and fish in salt.
In Vietnam, fish is salted and fermented to make "fish sauce," so sushi likely originated there.
Perhaps it was introduced to Japan during the Heian period along with tofu and miso.
The Kansai style is pressed sushi. Like persimmon leaf sushi, rice and toppings are pressed into a mold and then fermented to make it sour without using vinegar.
Fermented sushi was later introduced to Edo.
Half the population were samurai, and the remaining two-thirds were single craftsmen. Edokko, with their large number of single men, were short-tempered and quick to fight.
Because people were impatient and couldn't wait, the restaurant industry at the time had to think about what products would meet their needs.
Sushi is supposed to take a long time to ferment, but vinegar was added to it to quickly create a pseudo-fermented state.
This has the added benefit of extending the shelf life of raw fish.
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The sushi of today is completely different from the pretentious sushi restaurants in Ginza and Orchard that charge 10,000 yen for two pieces, or from Kurukuru Sushi , which prioritizes quantity over quality.
First of all, while the baby size rice balls today are about 15g each, the festival-loving Edokko size was a whopping 50g per piece, about half the weight of a convenience store rice ball.
Of course, the toppings were huge too. I was full after eating three pieces.
They grab it with their hands and stuff it into their mouths. What's more, they eat it at a food stall, not a restaurant , which is a first for fast food.
The vinegar is not the sour rice vinegar of today, but sake lees vinegar, made from sake lees. This by-product of sake is used to the fullest. It has a strong umami flavor and a slight reddish hue.
Compared to modern white rice, Edo period white rice would probably have been about 70% polished , with a light brown base color made from polished rice.
The rice had a slight reddish hue due to the effect of the lees and vinegar.
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As you can see, Edo-period sushi, made with only 70% polished rice, vinegared sake lees, wasabi, toppings, and soy sauce, is a healthy food.
The important thing here is that the vinegar used in the legendary Edomae sushi did not contain any sugar.
Sugar refined from sugarcane was already available, but at the time it was an extremely luxurious item. The idea of "sugar" was unthinkable in fast food, where 1 kan (1.8 mon) cost about 150 yen .
On the other hand, as anyone who has made their own sushi vinegar will understand, modern sushi vinegar contains an unreasonable amount of sugar. The recipe calls for 1 to 1.5 tablespoons per 1 cup of rice.
In reality, it has a slight sour taste, which can be disguised, but today's sushi is the same as eating white rice mixed with sugar.
"I try not to eat sugar."
That said, there are probably a lot of old men with high blood sugar who gobble down sushi.
Don't you think conveyor belt sushi is so sweet that it's inedible?
It seems to me that there are a lot of foods, not just sushi, but processed foods and other foods that prioritize image. What do you think?