Temaki is the handroll form of sushi. It comes from the Japanese words te, meaning hand, and maki, meaning roll. The handroll looks quite different to what we’ve come to know as traditional sushi. However, it is actually quite in keeping with the origins of this style of food.
Sushi was created on the streets and meant to be eaten on the go, with your hands. Nigiri was the first form, and it was salted fish that was placed on top of a ball of rice, squeezed together and served to the customer on the street. The handroll is simply an evolution of this.
Eat It Straight Away
The key with the handroll is that it should not be left sitting or put down on a plate. The ideal situation is the sushi chef finishes rolling the temaki and passes it straight to you to enjoy immediately. In a restaurant, if you aren’t sitting at the sushi bar, you may get it brought to you in a handroll rack, which is just as good – if it’s done immediately.
The reason you don’t want to let the temaki sit for too long or have it lie down on a plate is that the seaweed, also known as nori, will become soft or soggy. This makes the handroll far more difficult to eat because the nori becomes chewy, making biting into it harder. The best is when the nori is crisp and it breaks easily as you take a bite.
Use Your Hands
The key is in the name – the handroll. This is one that you should not use your chopsticks for, and definitely not a knife and fork. The entire piece is wrapped in seaweed and shaped like a cone, making it easy to handle and eat with your hands. If made well, it won’t fall apart as you take a bite – especially if the nori is still crisp and breaks easily.
Just because you’re eating it with your hands doesn’t mean you can’t add soy sauce. There are two ways to go here. You can either dip the temaki into your prepared soy sauce dish between bites, or you can carefully pour your soy sauce into the roll, starting at the wider top section. If you’re worried about the soy sauce running out, hold your handroll at a 30-degree angle until the rice and fish have soaked it up.
Eat It From The Top
One of the biggest things that newcomers to sushi face is how to actually eat the handroll, especially when spending time online at Australian betting sites. You eat it from the top down. The easiest way to do this is to hold the temaki almost on its side and bite into the wider, open section. You can think of it as similar to a taco, if that helps. You have to keep hold of the handroll in order to prevent the filling from falling out. Don’t forget to dip it into your soy sauce between bites to enhance the flavor.