Japan’s new frozen sushi DIY kit – Great foodie fun, or cold-hearted abomination?【Taste test】

Gin no Sara teams up with regional fishery company to give you everything you need to make your own sushi, but how does it taste?

Gin no Sara is Japan’s most popular sushi delivery company. “Sushi delivery company? So, it’s a sushi restaurant chain that also delivers takeout, right?” you might be asking, but Gin no Sara doesn’t have any eat-in spaces, and their generally out-of-the-way locations make them inconvenient for carryout orders, so pretty much all customers have Gin no Sara deliver their sushi to them.

However, Gin no Sara’s latest sushi offering isn’t something you can dig into as soon as its at your door, because it’s a frozen assemble-it-yourself sushi kit, with everything you need to put together an assortment of nigiri and gunkan pieces.

Called the “At-Home Nigiri Sushi” set, the kit is a joint project between Gin no Sara and Iwate Prefecture’s Sanriku Fisheries. Open up the box, and inside you’ll find 10 pre-formed blocks of vinegared sushi rice, five slices of frozen fish from Gin no Sara’s regular suppliers, and five frozen Iwate-sourced seafood selections from Sanriku.

▼ The Gin no Sara selection consists of tuna, scallop, shrimp, ikura (salmon roe), and negitoro (minced tuna with green onion), while the Iwate assortment is made up of salmon, squid, jacopever, greenling, and flounder with kelp.

Since the fish and rice come frozen, the first step is to defrost them. Following the illustrated instructions that come with the kit, we placed the seafood under running water, which had it thawed in a few minutes.

The rice, on the other hand, has to be thawed in the microwave, after poking a few holes in the container’s covering sheet.

Next, it’s time to assemble the sushi. Included in the kit are a pair of gloves to wear while you’re doing the work, plus nori (dried seaweed), wasabi, and soy sauce.

After applying a dab of wasabi on each block of rice, we started adding the slices of fish. This actually takes a more deft touch than we’d expected. Simply lay the fish on top, and it’ll slide off. Press it down to firmly, though, and you’ll squish the rice block and mangle the fish.

As we handled the fish, we noticed to our pleasant surprise that although it was now thawed, none of the flavorful juices of the seafood itself were dripping out.

Assembling the gunkan pieces comes with an additional challenge, as you’ve got to wrap them around the sides with nori to create their battleship-like base. Excessive fiddling with the seaweed can cause it to tear or crumble, so you’ll want to take a deep breath, then try to compete the wrap as smoothly and swiftly as you can.

▼ A spoon is handy for adding the ikura and negitoro with.

And then, once we’d assembled our tenth piece, it was time to eat!

Taste-testing duties fell to our Japanese-language reporter Saya Togashi, who started with the salmon, but even before taking a single bite she was impressed by its beautiful vibrant color.

And it tasted just as good as it looked! In fact, all of the seafood was immensely satisfying, rich in flavor with just the right amount of appetite-stimulating firmness. The cuts of fish were nice and thick, and large enough to wrap over the top corners of the rice blocks.

In addition, Saya was completely blown away by the quality of the rice. Saya is particularly particular when it comes to Japan’s representative grain. She finds frozen rice, whether its frozen rice balls bought at the supermarket or frozen leftovers of rice she’s cooked herself, completely unappealing, and she’s not crazy about microwavable rice packs either. And yet, the microwaved-from-frozen rice in the Gin no Sara kit was outstanding, with none of the lumpy texture or freezer-burn flavor she associates with frozen rice.

So it’s a win all around in terms of flavor, and Saya thinks this would be a great thing for sushi fans to keep stashed in their freezer for those sudden sushi cravings that inevitably visit Japanese cuisine foodies.

Oddly enough, you can’t buy the Gin no Sara At-Home Nigiri Sushi set through the regular Gin no Sara order system. Instead, it’s offered at select michi no eki (local roadside souvenir shops), and in downtown Tokyo at the Iwate Ginga Plaza regional products specialty shop in the Ginza neighborhood, with a suggested price of 2,680 yen (US$17.85). It’s also available for order online through Rakuten here, though at slightly higher prices, depending on how many kits you order (which sounds to us like a good excuse to buy more sushi).

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