Shrimp Nigiri Sushi (Ebi)

Shrimp sushi is probably a very popular sushi dish in America for its taste and looks. Most people also tend to love shrimp and if you’re still not into raw fish, you will at least appreciate this cooked shrimp sushi. There is also a raw version of shrimp sushi which I like better because of its softer texture and sweeter flavor. Making this at home may be slightly more difficult than other sushi mainly because you have to flatten the shrimp. Below images will show you how it’s done.

You need to have sushi rice. (Refer to how to make sushi rice.)

1. First, you need to peel your shrimps. You can use Tiger shrimps or bay shrimps similar in size. When peeling, leave the tail part.

2. Check to see if your shrimp has veins removed already. If not, remove them. Whether the vein is removed or not and got deep cut marks as a result will determine which side of shrimp you’re splitting to flatten. However, if you split it by the belly side, remember that the tail will face up on your sushi. Normally, it should face down and for you to do that, you need to buy shrimps with the vein still in so that you can manually remove the vein without carving off such a huge chunk of meat around the vein.

3. Take out a few bamboo skewers. We need to do some serious poking with these sticks.

Push down your shrimp and pierce the stick all the way through until reaching the tail. What this does is that it straightens the shrimp as we cook it.

Do it for all of them.

4. In boiling water, put the shrimps in for 30 seconds. It will be fully cooked in 30 seconds and by not over cooking, nice and soft texture of the shrimp will be preserved.

5. Take the sticks out of your shrimps.

6. So that cut mark is where you are going to cut through since this shrimp had the vein area cut. Cutting is very tricky. You do not want to cut too much to split the entire thing in half. You need to stop at some point so you will still have one piece.