Save A Small Fortune – How To Make Your Own Sashimi

I am on a bit of a health buzz at the moment and I went in to get some sashimi in town this week. It was delicious but as I sat there eating 4 pieces of raw fish for a tenner I thought to myself “Fuck me this is a serious rip off” and decided to come up with a better way of doing it. It has to be one of the biggest rips offs the world has ever seen in terms of serving up food because the prep really couldn’t be much simpler. So I legged it down to my local fish mongers and picked up some salmon and Tuna costing 26 Euros in total and was able to make enough for about 6 huge portions. I know you are probably shitting yourself at the thought of trying to make sashimi and that only Japanese chefs with 10 years training should be trying this but check out the technique. Super simple and super cheap. Cheap sashimi FTW!!!

Instructions

Step 1

So there are only 5 ingredients to make this. Go to the absolute best fish monger you can and tell them what you are going as they'll give you a better cut of tuna of you do. You should pop into the asian market to get the best quality pickled ginger, soy and wasabi

Step 2

I was only able to find the powdered wasabi which is not amazing (It is essentially horseradish with a small amount of wasabi in there). Get the fresh stuff in a tube if at all possible. Lash a couple of scoops of the powder into a bowl

Step 3

Stir in some water until it makes a smooth paste.

Step 4

This entire process take about 30 seconds. Even less if you are just squeezing it out of the tube.

Step 5

The Soy sauce really is the key. Get this brand (Kikkoman) as it is about as good as you can get. You'll notice all the good Japanese restaurants use it. All you are doing is fucking the bottle into the middle of the table. Not really rocket science!!!

Step 6

Things don't get much harder with the pickled ginger. Pull it out of the bag or the jar it came in and lose the liquid and just keep the flesh. Thats all the lovely side stuff sorted and now onto the fish.

Step 7

The salmon is the easiest. When buying it make sure that....1.It is super fresh with no smell 2.It is clean (pad any excess moisture off with a dry paper towel). Run your knife along the bottom of the fish to remove the skin.

Step 8

Don't worry if you leave a little flesh on the skin. That browner meat is no good for sashimi. All we are looking for here is pure flesh. Trim any excess off.

Step 9

Chop the salmon in half. Not the hardest thing you'll ever do.

Step 10

Then cut the fish up into little slices that are about a finger thick. Do not cut your finger off here! A sharp knife is essential.

Step 11

Getting the tuna fresh is incredibly important. Make sure it has no smell at all. It is in no way slimy and that it looks bright deed red. Anything leaning towards brown and just completely forget it. No good at all. You'll also want to ask the fish monger for loin. You want pure flesh. I got a decent piece but it still had a little sinew on the edges. Trim that away. Go to a good fish monger and tell them what you are using it for and they'll help you out big time.

Step 12

That huge piece of tuna cost me 18 Euros and that was in a high end shop. Start by cutting pieces that are roughly 2 fingers across.

Step 13

Do that the whole way across the fish.

Step 14

You'll find that some parts of the tuna are just weird and have sinew running through them. Cut those away and use them for something else because they are no good at all for sashimi. They could work in a soup or tartar.

Step 15

So by now you will be left with 100% pure meat. Cut away any blemishes.

Step 16

Cut the bigger pieces into small even sized pieces

Step 17

Slice across the grain (this is very important) so into the similar sized little pieces that you get when eating out. It is starting to look seriously like sashimi now!

Step 18

Slice them all up. The key now is that you don't want to serve this ice cold when it has just come out of the fridge. Let it come up to temperature for about 10 minutes but no longer as you want this to be fresh and delicious.

Step 19

Serve it up with the sides. There was enough here for a good hungry 6 people. I'd have got 10 miserable little pieces for the same price in most restaurants. Once you learn how to do this you will never look back

Step 20

Step 21

Step 22

Step 23

So the technique is really fucking easy to do. Watch some videos on Youtube if you are not 100% confident of cutting the fish. The main things to remember are…

• Get the fish as fresh as you possibly can
• There should be no smell at all form the fish it should smell of nothing
• Get a really sharp knife
• Get really good quality wasabi, ginger and soy

You probably never thought you’d see the day when you’d be able to make your own sashimi but if like me you have an addiction to it try this out and you’ll save yourself a small fortune!