Main Ingredients, Tools, and Kitchenware

Welcome! Here you will find information, pictures, and detailed recipes to various dishes found in many sushi restaurants. Recipes will include sushi and other popular Japanese dishes. Though it does take years of training and discipline to fully master the art of making sushi, I believe good sushi can also be made at home with the right tools, ingredients, and knowledge.

Dating back centuries ago in Japan, when vinegar rice was used as a preservation method for fish, sushi has now turned into a worldwide delicacy. The essence of sushi remains simple: Good vinegar rice complimented by a good quality topping. As long as you keep this in mind, you can make decent sushi at home!

First let's take a look at the main ingredients, tools, and kitchenware.

Dark Soy Sauce - I use Kikkoman brand. I've noticed other brands may be too sweet for certain recipes.

Light Soy Sauce - This is saltier than the dark soy sauce. It is used mainly for the lighter color.

Tamari Soy Sauce - Slightly thicker, and sweeter. This is used for sauces such as eel sauce or teriyaki sauce.

"Su" (Rice Vinegar) - Used for marination and preservation. I usually use the Mizkan brand

Sake - A rice wine made from two fermentation processes. This one contains 16% alcohol, but may vary depending on type and brand of sake.

Mirin - A sweet rice wine that contains sugar and less alcohol percentage than Sake. It is used for cooking.

Toasted Sesame Seeds

Katsuobushi - Dried Bonito Flakes. Used as topping and for making dashi

Konbu - Dried Kelp. Used for making dashi

Nori - Roasted Seaweed. Used for maki rolls and gunkan style sushi

Those are the main ingredients. There are other ingredients that you may encounter often as well, but we will cover those as we look at the individual recipes.

Here are the general tools/kitchenware you will need for making sushi. Please note, if you do not have a certain tool or knife, you can always try to improvise!

Makisu - Bamboo mat used for rolling maki sushi rolls. These are pretty cheap and can be found in any asian market. I would try to stay away from the really thin ones. You will have a hard time rolling sushi without proper thickness.

From left to right:

Western Knife - Any really sharp, thin knife should do the trick. I use this primarily for almost all kitchen work, with the exception of neta cutting.

Yanagi - Japanese knife used for cutting sushi and sashimi. I like to reserve the blade on my Yanagi for neta cutting. The yanagi has a very thin, sharp blade, perfect for cutting slicing delicate items. The back face of the yanagi is designed so the fish, or other ingredients do not stick to the knife. Though a Yanagi is the best knife for cutting sushi and sashimi, you can try to substitute a really sharp, thin knife if you don't have one.

Deba - Kitchen cleaver. This is used when preparing and filleting larger fish.

Petty Knife - Small paring knife. Used for preparing and cutting smaller items, including fruit, shrimp, fish, etc.

Oyster Knife - Used for opening shells and removing oyster meat

Fish Scaler - Used for scaling fish before filleting.

Bone picker - Used for removing bones from fish.


This is just the general overview of what you might need in the kitchen to make sushi and other japanese dishes. As I mentioned, you may encounter recipes that require other main ingredients or tools.

I will be updating this blog consistently, so be sure to check back often! If you have a favorite sushi dish you want to learn, drop a comment and I'll try to help out!