This is one of the few nigiri sushi that is served cooked. In fact you need to cook eel because consumption because see eel is mildly toxic when uncooked. (And you can avoid bei

ng zapped in the mouth) It is almost easiest to make a good anago because it always taste pretty good when cooked and the eel sauce is a tasty thick and rich sauce that will greatly enhance the flavor of the eel. The sauce is usually made out of a combination of soy sauce, sugar, salt, a bit of MSG, bonito extract (sometimes), a bit of sake (sometimes) and other things.

It is not advised that you eat too much eel although it is delicious because it is still quite toxic(makes your taste bud rough and white) if you eat a lot of them, you might get sick from eating too much of it. In terms of its priority in eating, save the anago for the very last since anago sauce has the strongest flavor out of all fishes and seashells.

If you want to try out more eel, try the eel don too. It is a bowl of rice served with strips of egg and a bed of sliced anago.

I am very surprised to see that hokkigai is not so prominent in the US.

Hokkigai clam is a specialty item in Hokkaido Japan and you can buy frozen ones. Surf clam has a crispier texture than the akagai and abalone and the meat that you are served in sushi is the top part of the cleaned surf clam, with all the rest of the meat(the intestines and the himo) detached.

In my experience, the hokkigai surf clam is served raw, but it will taste okay even if you poached it in a hot pot or shabu-shabu. Usually you do that for low grade hokkigai, but you should save it for sashimi for the good ones.

The profile picture to the right shows a natural hokkigai surf clam. The surf clam should look pinkish white in the lower body and it should look dark red on the tip of the clam. I have see some hokkigai with bright red top and a white bottom and I highly suspect they are counterfeits.

Scallop is a simple delicacy compared to the other more exotic seashell options. You will expect them often in a sushi restaurant. I think scallop only taste good when served raw and it loses a great deal of its taste when cooked. You can taste the Unami (rumoured 5th sense of taste, representing freshness, just like eating MSG) of the scallop when it is served fresh. And it tastes very good in that way.

You should look for sushi grade scallop. In the US the sushi grade scallops are flash frozen and thawed before it is consumed as an attempt to kill all the parasites in the seafood. Usually it should do the job, but you can avoid eating them. For I would take the risk in order to enjoy sushi properly. If you avoid sushi, you should avoid oyster in the first place. There are TONS of bacteria in oyster because of the nature of how it thrives. Raw oyster contains the highes amount of hepatitus bacteria and just the sheer thought of it makes me sick. Nowadays I don’t eat oyster raw (or just one) but I eat sushi without any problem. My motto is cooked food can be contaminated also, so it is not the food but the chef that prepares the food.

Unfortunately flash frozen sushi will usually tarnish the taste and texture of sushi fish, but recently it is required by the FDA that all fishes (except tuna!! must be because of the expensive otoro) has to be flash frozen. So go to Japan or elsewhere if you want to try the 100% fresh scallop.

Ebi means shrimp in Japanese. It is simple but nice. Shrimp can be served raw or cooked in nigiri sushi. The cooked ones are more chewy in texture and the raw ones taste a bit more watery (should not be be too slimy if the shrimp is fresh enough or big enough).

Bigger shrimp has a better texture and usually is me pricey. As some people are not very used to eating meat raw, it might be a good idea to eat these crustacean cooked because they might contain quite a lot of bacterias if uncooked. Actually I always think that raw crustaceans would have more bacteria than raw sea fish. But then eating a piece or two of them is still a delicacy.

Shrimp can also be made in tempura and tempura shrimp appears in a lot of chef creation rolls that I will mention later on. I think it will blend well with almost every ingredient to give a full and rich flavor.

As with other seafood, shrimp is high in calcium and protein but low in food energy. A shrimp-based meal is also a significant source of cholesterol, from 7 mg to 251 mg per 100 g of shrimp, depending on the method of preparation.

You can try shrimp sushi in different sizes:

Cooked Ebi

Raw Ebi

Big Ebi

Huge Ebi

MONSTER Ebi

(no such thing…look for a lobster maybe)

When used in sushi, octopus meat is poached slightly before being used. (You have to because octopus skin is full of bacterias and possibly parasites) Before it is cooked, octopus skin is semi-transparent and it will turn into a solid white colour after being cooked briefly. The cut of octopus meat is especially important because if you made too thick a cut, the sliced octopus will be too thick to chew on. It takes a sushi master to do the job well, because the octopus meat is so slippery and slimy that it is hard to slice it very thin. Another thing is Octopus meat is very hard to digest and it might make the digestion easier if you slice it thinner to begin with.

Octopus babies(little octopuses) is marinated in some salt, sugar, garlic and some other “natura ingredients” (Including red pigments) to be served as an appetitzer. Usually it looks bloody red in appearance and while it taste good in the first few bite, you will lose your sense of taste in a few bites. My thought on the appetitizer: 1 is great, 2 is good, 3 is enough.

Octopus is high in cholesterol but octopus contains a lot of taurine which is beneficial to brian health. Octopus has a big brain and no wonder it is a smart predator in the ocean. But then, yummy yummy.