Sushi is a Japanese dish, and most people picture raw fish when they hear the word. What every piece actually shares is the rice, which is short-grain and seasoned with vinegar (shari). It carries a topping or filling (neta) such as fish, egg, roe or vegetables, and rolls get a wrapper of nori on the outside. So any answer to what sushi is made of starts with the rice.
Toppings and wrapper separate one type from another, along with the shape. The seasoned rice stays the same.
The vinegar also does a safety job. The NSW Food Authority’s sushi guidelines (2011) require acidifying sushi rice to pH 4.6 or lower to inhibit bacterial growth.
What Are the Main Components of Sushi?
Raw fish isn’t required. The rice always is.
The word itself points at the rice. Wikibooks traces it to an outdated grammatical form meaning “it’s sour”, and the Snopes fact-check agrees that the term names the vinegared rice, not the seafood.
The rice is short-grain Japonica seasoned with a mixture of vinegar, sugar and salt. On top of it or inside it goes the neta, which can be raw fish, cooked seafood, roe, egg or vegetables. A sheet of nori wraps maki, temaki and gunkan, but most nigiri and chirashi go without one.
Wasabi, pickled ginger and soy sauce come alongside rather than inside. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (Andrew F. Smith, 2004) lists them as the standard condiments.
Sashimi is sliced raw fish served without rice, so it sits outside the definition. That is why the question of whether sashimi counts as sushi keeps coming up on menus.
If you want the dish itself rather than the ingredients, the page on what sushi is covers that.
Sushi Rice: Variety, Seasoning and Ratio
Whatever ends up on top, the rice underneath is short-grain Japonica seasoned with rice vinegar, sugar and salt.
Smith (2004) ranks the rice second in importance, behind the fish. Wikipedia, Wikibooks and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics put it first.
I side with the second group. Cucumber rolls and inari still count as sushi, and fish with no rice is sashimi.
Which Rice Works
A Scientific Reports study (2017) found that stickiness rises as amylose content falls, and it calls stickiness between grains the key requirement for sushi.
Japonica varieties sit at the sticky end. A Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly study of 29 Koshihikari samples measured 16.2 to 20.0% amylose, and found that growing temperature after heading shifted stickiness even inside that single variety (Okamoto and Horino).
Labels differ between sources. Wikipedia’s sushi entry calls the traditional rice medium-grain, while Smith (2004) and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics say short-grain.
Both describe Japonica rice (Oryza sativa japonica), which a 2025 study in Applied Sciences (first posted as a Preprints.org preprint) names as the preferred choice for sushi.
Long-grain rice is the usual wrong pick, though the Scientific Reports paper cites Ayabe et al. (2009), who found that Khao Dawk Mali (Indica) and Nipponbare (Japonica) differed in stickiness even at similar amylose, because of material leached from the grain surface. Brown rice is an accepted variation according to Wikipedia, just not the default.
What Goes Into the Seasoning
Sushi-zu, the seasoning mix, starts with rice vinegar for the acid base. Sugar gives the rice a sheen and salt seasons the grains. Some recipes also add a small piece of kombu, which is kelp.
CooksInfo’s reference mix is 6 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt, warmed until everything dissolves.
Dosing is where sources split. CooksInfo puts it at about 1 tablespoon per cup (130 g) of cooked rice, while Mitsukan tells buyers of its bottled sushi-zu to use 2 tablespoons for the same amount.
Bottled seasoned vinegar already carries sugar and salt. The Mitsukan product CooksInfo lists also contains high fructose corn syrup, MSG, disodium guanylate and disodium inosinate, so read the label before stacking your own sugar and salt on top.
Season the rice while it is hot and fold it gently. Then fan it to cool it fast, since quick cooling gives the grains a glossy finish, according to Hiroko Liston’s recipe notes.
Fish, Seafood, Egg and Vegetable Toppings
Neta covers raw fish such as tuna, cooked seafood such as shrimp and eel, roe, sweet egg omelet and vegetables.
| Group | Examples | Typical role |
|---|---|---|
| Raw fish | maguro (tuna), salmon, yellowtail | Nigiri topping, roll filling |
| Cooked seafood | ebi (shrimp), unagi (eel), octopus | Nigiri topping, roll filling |
| Roe | tobiko, ikura | Garnish, gunkan topping |
| Egg | tamago (sweet omelet) | Nigiri topping |
| Vegetables | cucumber, avocado | Roll filling |
Raw Fish and Cooked Seafood
Tuna and salmon lead the raw side.
Smith (2004) names salmon, tuna, shrimp and sea urchin as the usual raw seafood on nigiri. Uwajimaya’s sushi reference adds that shrimp and octopus also appear cooked, so one species can land in either group depending on the shop.
Unagi, grilled freshwater eel, is a cooked topping by default.
Roe, Egg and Vegetables
Roe adds texture and color rather than bulk. The small, crunchy one is tobiko, from flying fish, while ikura is the larger salmon roe.
Loose roe will not stay on a mound of rice, so it usually goes into gunkan maki, a nori strip wrapped around an oval of rice (Wikipedia).
On the vegetable side, cucumber and avocado go into rolls, and corn with mayonnaise shows up as a gunkan topping.
Tamago, the sweet rolled omelet, covers the egg slot and sits on rice like a fish slice would. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics lists it next to cooked or seared meats, fish and vegetables as nigiri toppings that are not raw fish.
What Imitation Crab Is Made Of
Imitation crab is mostly not crab. Surimi, a paste of minced white fish, makes up 35% to 50% of the product by weight, according to Healthline.
The rest is starch (wheat, potato, corn or tapioca) to firm the paste and make it freezable, plus egg white and sometimes soy protein. Water, sugar, salt, vegetable oil and crab flavoring fill in whatever is left.
The fish is usually Alaska pollock. With the starch and egg white added, the crab stick in a California roll carries fish, egg and often wheat.
What Is Nori, and What Can Replace It?
Sushi wrappers are made from nori, a red algae that gets dried, pressed into thin sheets and usually roasted (yaki-nori).
A full sheet measures 21 cm by 19 cm at Isoya and Yamashiroya, and rolls use it whole or cut down.
Maki rolls wrap rice and filling in a nori sheet, then get cut crosswise into bite-size pieces (Smith, 2004).
In maki the nori sits on the outside. Uramaki flips that, with the rice outside and the nori tucked in around the filling. Temaki is a large nori cone with the filling spilling from the wide end, and gunkan uses a nori strip around a rice oval to hold loose toppings.
A hand roll skips the cutting step and is eaten straight from the cone.
Uramaki exists partly to hide the nori. OU Kosher says the inside-out roll was built for American diners who did not find the seaweed appealing.
Soy paper and rice paper work as wrappers for people who dislike seaweed, per AOL’s sushi and sashimi guide and Wikipedia’s list of sushi ingredients.
Supply is shrinking. Japan’s domestic harvest for fiscal 2024 was 5.94 billion sheets, about half the 10.68 billion of fiscal 2001, and wholesale prices reached a record 24.1 yen per sheet, more than double fiscal 2020 (Asia News Network, citing the national fisheries cooperatives’ nori council).
Nori also takes up moisture. Isoya advises storing it away from humidity, since a damp sheet loses the crispness that makes yaki-nori worth using.
Wasabi, Pickled Ginger and Soy Sauce: What Is in Each
The green paste on most sushi plates is mainly horseradish with mustard and coloring, and it gets its own section below. The pickled ginger is young ginger in sweet vinegar. Soy sauce comes from a fermented mash of soybeans and wheat.
Gari, the pickled ginger, is sliced thin from young ginger and brined in rice vinegar, sugar and salt. People eat it between pieces to reset the palate.
The pink tint is a pickling reaction. Only very young ginger turns pink on its own, so Wikipedia’s gari entry notes that many commercial brands add E124, beet juice or red shiso.
Shoyu is made from roughly equal parts soybeans and wheat, cultured with koji mold and mixed with salt water to ferment, according to a 2017 Molecular Medicine Reports paper on Japanese soy sauce.
At the counter, the sauce is for the topping. In Japan a nigiri gets turned upside down so the fish takes the soy sauce rather than the rice, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics notes.
Real Wasabi Versus Horseradish Paste
Jennifer Bloeser, CEO of Oregon Coast Wasabi (the largest wasabi grower in the US), estimates that 99 percent of what people eat as wasabi is mostly horseradish, according to VegNews.
Cook’s Illustrated found the same when it tested several wasabi powders and pastes from an Asian specialty market. None contained Wasabia japonica, the real plant. They were garden horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) with cornstarch, mustard and artificial colorants.
Real wasabi is the grated rhizome of Wasabia japonica. It grows in cool mountain streams, which makes it hard to farm outside Japan, and the heat is milder than most people expect. It is also never prepared in advance.
The horseradish-based paste is horseradish, mustard flour, cornstarch and green coloring. The heat is sharper and more aggressive, and because it is cheap and shelf-stable, restaurants can serve it freely.
Unless the menu names Wasabia japonica, assume the paste is horseradish-based.
In Japan, sushi chefs apply a small amount of wasabi to suitable pieces while preparing them, and some Western chefs skip it entirely, according to Wikibooks.
What Does Each Type of Sushi Contain?
Nigiri, gunkan maki, maki, uramaki, temaki, chirashi, inari and oshi all run on the same seasoned rice. The topping and the wrapper change, and so does the shape.
| Type | Rice | Wrapper | Typical topping or filling | Raw fish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nigiri | Hand-pressed mound | None | Fish slice, cooked seafood | Often |
| Gunkan maki | Hand-formed oval | Nori strip | Sea urchin, natto, oysters, quail egg | Sometimes |
| Maki | Rolled inside | Nori outside | Fish, vegetables, egg | Optional |
| Uramaki | Rolled, rice outside | Nori inside | Imitation crab, avocado, fish | Optional |
| Temaki | Loose in a cone | Nori cone | Fish, vegetables, spilling out | Optional |
| Chirashi | Bowl base | None | Sashimi slices, garnishes | Usually |
| Inari | Stuffed in a pouch | Fried tofu | Rice, other fillings | Rarely |
| Oshi | Pressed in a box | None | Layered toppings, cut in blocks | Varies |
| Sashimi (not sushi) | None | None | Sliced fish only | Yes |
The nigiri format is the simplest build, one topping on one mound of rice. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics calls it Japan’s most popular basic form.
Chirashi has two regional versions, according to Wikipedia. Edomae (Tokyo) chirashi arranges uncooked toppings over the rice, while Kansai (Osaka) gomoku-style chirashi mixes cooked or uncooked ingredients into the rice.
The inari pouch is the outlier, deep-fried tofu (abura-age) stuffed with rice that Smith (2004) describes as slightly sweetened.
A California roll is an uramaki of imitation crab, avocado and cucumber, so it holds no raw fish.
Nigiri, gunkan and chirashi usually default to raw toppings, while inari and cooked-filling rolls rarely carry any.
Is Sushi Always Raw Fish?
No. Cooked, fried, baked, seared and vegetable versions all exist, and the raw-fish association comes from one branch of the family.
Sushi began as preservation. Narezushi, fish stored in fermented rice, came first, possibly in the Mekong River basin, according to Wikipedia.
Pairing raw fish with vinegared rice is a nineteenth-century Edo development (Smith, 2004), and Hanaya Yohei is credited with nigiri around 1824.
Plenty of formats skip raw fish altogether. Tempura-fried shrimp rolls, baked rolls and fruit fillings are common examples, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics lists seared fish or meat as a nigiri option.
Sashimi is the raw-only dish. It arrives on daikon radish and shiso leaves, without rice or nori, and costs more than sushi because it is only fish (AOL’s sushi and sashimi guide).
Raw fish on a menu usually comes with a “sushi-grade” label, and no regulation governs that term. Even for something as common as sushi-grade salmon, the label is the seller’s claim, not a certification.
Cook’s Illustrated adds that the FDA’s freezing guidance is a recommendation that only some states enforce, so it advises asking the fishmonger what the term means for that fish.
Some fish do not belong on the plate raw at all. Cook’s Illustrated rules out freshwater fish and calls salmon and herring, especially wild-caught, particularly high-risk.
Safety, Allergens and Dietary Limits of Sushi Ingredients
Parasites in raw fish get most of the attention, but bacteria in cooked rice left at room temperature and allergens in the fish, soy sauce and seeds matter too.
The reference numbers vary by source and by jurisdiction.
- Under the FDA Fish and Fisheries Products Hazards and Controls Guidance, the first parasite freezing schedule is -4 degrees F (-20 degrees C) or below for 7 days total.
- The second is -31 degrees F (-35 degrees C) or below until solid, then held there for 15 hours.
- The third is -31 degrees F until solid, then -4 degrees F or below for 24 hours.
- Sushi rice acidity sits at pH 4.6 or less in the NSW Food Authority’s guidelines (Australia) and below pH 4.2 in Kentucky’s guidance.
- Anisakiasis in Japan averaged 19,737 cases a year in 2018 to 2019 (CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal).
Raw Fish Handling and Mercury
Anisakis larvae are the main raw-fish hazard. The CDC says anyone who eats raw or undercooked fish is at risk, and the worm can attach to the stomach lining and cause severe pain, vomiting and fever (as reported by WSVN).
Freezing is the standard control for parasites in sushi, and it works when it follows one of the FDA schedules above.
Sources disagree on scale. CNN’s 2017 report cited roughly 2,000 to 3,000 cases a year in Japan, while the CDC-journal study estimates 19,737, and its authors set out to measure the gap between official counts and actual incidence.
The freezing rule has limits. Farmed fish raised and fed under documented conditions are exempt from freezing, with supplier paperwork (South Carolina DHEC). The FDA notes its schedules may not suit particularly large fish, and that brining and pickling reduce the parasite hazard without eliminating it.
The FDA recommends that pregnant women, older adults, young children and people with weakened immune systems avoid raw fish, per the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. That settles most of the question of whether kids can eat sushi, since cooked and vegetable rolls sidestep the parasite issue.
Mercury depends on the species. In the FDA and EPA fish advice (revised October 2021), bigeye tuna sits under “Choices to Avoid”, albacore and yellowfin under “Good Choices”, and salmon under “Best Choices”, so ask which tuna is on the plate.
Allergens and Gluten
| Component | Allergen or diet issue | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Fish toppings | Fish | Nigiri, sashimi, most rolls |
| Shrimp and real crab | Shellfish | Ebi nigiri, crab rolls |
| Soy sauce | Soy, wheat | Dipping sauce |
| Sesame seeds | Sesame | Uramaki coating, garnish |
| Egg | Egg | Tamago |
Sources split on soy sauce. FDA guidance, as quoted by Gluten Free Watchdog, bars gluten-free claims on soy sauce made from wheat and soybeans, and allergen labeling law requires wheat to be declared.
A 2004 International Journal of Molecular Medicine study found that fermentation breaks wheat allergens down, and it detected none in the commercial Japanese soy sauces it tested.
For a wheat allergy or celiac disease, treat standard shoyu as a wheat source. Ask for a wheat-free tamari and read the label, since not all tamari is wheat-free.
Sesame became the ninth major US food allergen on January 1, 2023 under the FASTER Act, but the labeling rule covers packaged foods (FDA). A roll built at the counter carries no label, so ask.
Vegetarian and Fish-Free Choices
Many sushi types are vegetarian, according to Wikipedia, but vegetarian is not the same as fish-free in practice.
Cucumber and avocado rolls are rice, vinegar, seaweed and vegetables, with no fish in the recipe. Egg-based pieces are vegetarian but not vegan. Shared tools are the other catch, so ask whether fish-free rolls get their own board and knife.
The recipe tells you what is in the roll. Whether fish touched it depends on the kitchen.
Sushi Ingredients FAQ
Why is sushi rice sticky?
Short-grain Japonica rice carries more amylopectin than amylose, and amylopectin turns gluey when cooked. A 2025 study in Applied Sciences (first posted as a Preprints.org preprint) links higher amylose to firmer, less clingy grains.
The same study lists washing, soaking and the water-to-rice ratio as steps that shift the texture further.
Why does sushi rice contain vinegar?
Vinegar gives the rice the sour taste the word sushi refers to, and it raises the acidity enough to slow bacterial growth, per the NSW Food Authority. Sugar then adds a sheen, according to CooksInfo.
How many calories are in a sushi roll?
The rice sets the baseline. Dietitian Lisa Moskovitz says one roll can hold a whole cup of rice, worth about 200 calories and 45 grams of carbohydrate (Prevention Australia).
Fillings add the rest, and tempura and mayonnaise-based sauces raise the total fastest.
Is sushi healthy?
Yes, when the roll is built on fish and vegetables. Tempura fillings, heavy mayonnaise and cream cheese undo that, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and dietitians quoted by Time.
Sodium is the other limit. The Heart Foundation puts hand rolls at 400 to 730 mg per 100 g, as reported by The New Daily in 2017.
Checking What Goes Into a Sushi Roll Before You Order
A menu name tells you very little. Ask what the topping or filling is and whether the fish is raw, and check the sauces and coatings separately.
Ask about any allergen or diet limit first. Raw versus cooked comes next, and sauces and extras come last.
The order follows what can still change. A sesame coating or a wheat-based sauce cannot be taken out of a finished roll, while mayonnaise can come on the side and cooked fish can replace raw.
You do end up with a narrower menu, since a roll cleared of every restricted ingredient is usually a plainer one.
Knowing the standard builds speeds the questions up, and a guide to the types of sushi rolls lists what each one normally holds.
