11 sushi facts that will surprise you

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: 11 things about sushi that you didn't see coming.

I love sushi, but it turns out I'm doing almost everything wrong – and ha, the irony: my (according to some, very bad) sushi quirk suddenly seems very polite. How do you score on the sushi scale?

Sushi does not come from Japan
Little shock: it comes from Southeast Asia near the Mekong River and slowly meandered to Japan, where it really took its current form around 1850.

Sushi rice was not meant to be eaten
But to press the filling tightly together and to protect the dish itself from flies. Want to get started at home? Then read how to make perfect sushi rice.

It takes five years to become a sushi chef
In Japan, a real sushi chef is called Itamea-San. Such a chef is knowledgeable about all aspects and developments in the profession. To become an Itamea-San master, you must go a long way, as you need to complete a special training. This training lasts at least five years and achieving it is not that easy. This only works if you have a huge passion for Japanese cuisine and possess a good dose of perseverance.

You eat sushi with your hands
How nice is that, because I always struggle with those chopsticks because the sushi is simply too big to get in your mouth all at once with chopsticks. But THAT DOESN'T HAVE TO. Wonderful: I now have the best excuse to eat with my hands.

Sushi or shoeshi
The sushi chef and sushi artist Yujia Hu, also known as theonigiriart on Instagram, made his shoeshi (with angelic patience!) at the Japanese restaurant sakana in Milan. He works just like he makes any other sushi (sushi rice, nori sheets, the works). For the tiny details, like thin Adidas stripes on the Adidas-shoeshi or the famous Nike swoosh on the Nike-shoeshi, he uses a toothpick.

In Japan, sushi tastes better
Because everywhere in the Western world, the fish, even if they say it's fresh, is frozen for at least 24 hours. They do this to kill parasites. Japanese sushi chefs are trained to see if there are parasites in the fish. So there, the fish is really fresher than fresh.

You eat nigiri the other way around
So first the fish or the egg part on your tongue and then the rice on top.

Sushi helps against dry eyes
Sitting behind a computer all day, you won't be the only one who gets dry eyes from it. And what turns out? Research shows that there is a very tasty solution: sushi. Well, not really sushi, that's what we make of it. According to researchers Hokkaido University in Japan, it helps to eat fatty fish like tuna, salmon, sardines, and mackerel. In other words: the main ingredients of at the office? That’s a whole different story. And it really feels super deluxe..

Never tip the sushi chef
That is considered extremely rude. You can offer him a sake or otherwise make a nice bow for him.

Leaving soy sauce is very rude
I always get looked at with horror when I drink my soy sauce bowl empty at the end of the meal. But it turns out: this is always better than wasting soy sauce. Even better: make sure you don't have anything left. You do this by pouring tiny bits of soy sauce into your bowl according to good Japanese custom and then topping it up a little each time. There are also chefs who are horrified by the need to dip your sushi in soy sauce because hey, they have brought the sushi to perfect flavor, you shouldn't ruin it with an excess of soy sauce. The most important lesson here: you eat the sushi as the chef prepares it. So with soy or without soy, with wasabi or without wasabi, you don't mess with that, and so I still end up making a mistake…

Amateurism at its peak
Dipping your sushi made of rice into the soy sauce so that the rice crumbles and falls into your sauce. A lot of love has been put into the rice, you shouldn't ruin it with an overdose of sauce. Always dip only the fish in the sauce and not the rice. The rice absorbs quickly, causing it to fall apart. Moreover, the taste quickly becomes overpowering. What a waste.

Image: Unsplash