There are few cultural cuisines quite so paradoxical as sushi. On paper, sushi sounds like an utterly abominable premise to western sensibilities: vinegared rice, rolled up inside a wrapping of nori (seaweed), and comprised largely of raw fish and seafood? And yet sushi is a wildly popular dish in the United States. Japanese sushi restaurants can be found even in small rural towns, and are everywhere in larger cities. One can even find sushi in most regular supermarkets.
Sushi comes in a wide variety of styles and presentations, depending on their ingredients and the method of their preparation, but when most Americans think Sushi, they generally picture makizushi, literally meaning "rolled sushi". Typically, makizushi is rolled in nori, which is the Japanese name for any of a variety of red alga seaweed species. Given that nori is the principle element behind the "rolled" (maki) portion of makizushi, its preparation is vital to the outcome of the entire dish.
From the initial seeding process, through harvest and the final preparation of nori, every step is intensely monitored and controlled through a system that has been perfected and well understood for centuries. There are over 230 square miles of Japanese coastal waters devoted to the farming of nori, from which around 350,000 tons are harvested a year bringing in roughly two billion US dollars in revenue.
Nori is grown beneath the water suspended from nets that float upon the water's surface, where they continue to grow for a period of about 45 days before harvest. Once harvested, nori is typically processed by mechanical means designed to mimic the traditional Japanese practices that have been perfected over hundreds if not thousands of years. These practices are not unlike producing paper, and the end result is a dried, paper-thin sheet of nori about 8 inches by 7 inches.
Similar to fine wine, the production of nori can be adjusted to produce a variety of grades of differing quality and expense. The cheapest varieties, typically produced in Chinese coastal waters, can go for as low as six American cents per sheet. On the opposite end of that scale, nori available only in Japan can go for as much as fifty US dollars per sheet.
A sheet or nori is then often used to make a single roll of makizushi by literally rolling up the ingredients inside of it to produce a tube-like item, which is then sliced several times to produce the typical western image of sushi. There are various types of sushi, each differentiated by the number and types of ingredients included in the roll. Nori is also used in forms of sushi that are not rolled in the typical cylindrical manner, for example Temaki which is a cone shaped configuration of nori that is literally stuffed full of its ingredients, looking something like an ice cream cone.
Author Resource:-
This article was written by Paul Wise. If you are looking for more information on Nori, Paul recommends visiting http://www.sushimaven.com. They offer a wide selection of products for your many needs.
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