Step 1:
Buy the fish
If you'll be using fish for your sushi, your ultimate rule of thumb is to find the freshest stuff possible. If you'll be making vegetarian sushi, skip to Step 2.
The cooked and the raw. Some fish and seafood used for sushi is always or usually served raw; some is always or usually cooked. Popular raw fish choices include yellowtail (called "hamachi"), tuna (maguro or the fattier toro), sea bass (suzuki), halibut (hirame), and mackerel (saba). Salmon (sake), crab (kani), freshwater eel (unagi), and octopus (tako) will nearly always be cooked or cured (and salmon should always have been deep-frozen at some point). Shrimp is served both raw (ama ebi) and cooked (ebi). Fish eggs, or roe--including herring (kazunoko), flying fish (tobiko), and salmon (ikura) roe--are usually salted or cured; sea urchin roe (uni) is not.
Is it fresh? Use these guidelines to ensure you're buying the best quality fish and seafood you can find: - Fresh fish should not smell strongly fishy; it should be almost odorless, or have a faint scent of the sea.
- The flesh should be firm and shiny with no discoloration, and it should spring back when you press it.
- You probably won't need a whole fish, but if you're buying one, the eyes should be clear, the scales shiny, and the gills clean and bright red.
Your best bet. Japanese and some other fish markets sell ultra-fresh "sashimi-grade" fish, which is usually farmed in Japan or frozen right on the fishing boat, then thawed under refrigeration by the seller. It's not cheap, but try to use this if you can find it.
For the beginner. The popular California rolls, among others, are often made with artificial crabmeat (surimi), which is actually cooked whitefish made to look and taste like crab. This is a low-cost ingredient that's not intimidating to beginners. Other good first-timer ingredients are avocado, cucumber, tuna, omelet (see Step 4), freshwater eel, and cooked, butterflied shrimp.
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