Rice – What’s the best way to store unused sushi rice

According to Seductions of Rice (which also has the best written instructions for making sushi rice I've seen), any Japanese-style rice will work fine for sushi rice. They further define Japanese Rice as Japonica short rice which has a length:width ratio of 2.5:1. The grains should look translucent and rounded, sometimes with a small white spot at one end.

For example, I personally use "Akita Komachi" organic rice. This is also a "half-brown" rice, which gives it more vitamin content than pure white rice, as well as a nice nutty flavor.

According to them, Japanese rice is frequently covered in talc or powdered starch to keep it dry, which is why rinsing it prior to cooking is essential.

I'm not going to go through their entire instructions for preparing sushi rice -- you can borrow the book from your local library for that -- but I will go over the essentials to make sure you're not missing major steps:

1. Rinse the rice
2. Soak the rice in cold water for 20 minutes
3. Cook the rice
4. Mix the rice with vinegar, sugar and salt
5. Spread the rice out in a wide pan to cool
6. Make sushi within 3 hours.

It is the rice that is important, regardless of the cooker you use. If you think you are unable to find Sushi rice on your own in local market, why not check with a Sushi stall chef/owner near by?

Some people get mistaken with sticky rice, because really Sushi and sticky are on the same category. You could even say that Italian risotto is as well. However sushi rice is rinsed and surface starch is removed.

Yamikuronue has already given you some good insight. Perhaps she could tell you what rice you could buy :)

I hope you have the basic sushi rolling bamboo mat to help you with. From mine and many of others' experience, the mat is very useful.

I have used this brand to make nice maki rolls. The following recipe seems to be indicating a method (water sprinkling) that I saw/ate in a Japanese restaurant in Tokyo near Maru building. Hope it helps.

Edit 1: If you want to make best sushi out of normal rice, this is a bruteforce method we tried at home for the first time. Not the best Sushi found in a Sushi bar in Japan, but still it was a taste to remember, and an experience that made sense.

• break the long grain rice (you can use a mortar, or bottle, or any clean/non-contaminated cylinder on your cutting board :) )
• wash the rice until the starch goes away - even if it's not 100%, it's good enough when you have soaked it.
  • soak the rice
  • rinse and wash again and rinse
• depending on the usual 'hardness' of the rice you use, and how much water you add per cup of rice, you may have to change the amount of water you add. For example, if you have 50g of raw rice, and 75g of water, then the total weight is 125g. You must keep the same total weight when you add water to the soaked/washed rice.
• you can very well cook the rice in a pan
• good heat to cook rice: after boiling, bring down the heat to minimum and let it be, no need to take lid off
• once rice is cooked, you can mix it with sushi vinegar . If you do not have rice/sushi vinegar, then you can add some plain vinegar and pinches of salt
• mix all, stir well

This gives you just nice rice for sushi :)