Sushi Making Class with Cooking Sun Tokyo

On a trip to Tokyo you’re bound to have sushi for at least one of your meals every day. However, learning the fundamentals of sushi making, along with some of the history of all of the ingredients, is a whole ‘nother story! I got the chance to take Cooking Sun’s Homemade Sushi Making Class in Tokyo and it couldn’t have been a better experience.

Apron and cooking utensils ready for the class.

The Cooking Sun studio is bright and airy. You are greeted by the wonderful ladies who run the place as you walk in and are handed your bright orange apron. After brief introductions from the instructor, as well as fellow class-mates, we went over the menu for the day.

The traditional Japanese sushi menu was comprised of 8 different dishes (each attendee gets a full printed menu with the recipes for each dish to take home). The first dish is Tamagoyaki, the traditional rolled egg. Then comes Inari Age, a deep fried tofu pocket filled with rice. Next is sushi topping shrimp, sushi rice, California Roll, Hosomaki (thin rolls with cucumber and tuna), Nigiri with mixed fish and finally Miso Soup.

The instructor walks through each part of each dish while giving detailed background of each ingredient. The first (and one of the most important) thing to make was Dashi, a broth like mixture used in almost every one of the recipes. We followed the instructor step by step as we whisked our eggs, mixed our sushi rice and rolled our ingredients to perfection (or as good as we could get).

Both the instructor and the manager of Cooking Sun who was helping out were extremely attentive and helpful as we fumbled through the actual sushi rolling process. Glasses were always full of tea and dishes were cleared away and washed efficiently.

Cooking Sun instructor showing the class how to prepare the egg mixture.

The class was about three hours long, but the time flew by as we prepared all of our different rolls. In the end, they came together beautifully on our plates and the best part of the class arrived; eating our masterpieces! All of the participants were pleasantly surprised with how well our dishes turned out and the room was silent as we all scarfed down our finished products.

After washing it all down with miso soup and sake, we said “gochisousama” which we learned is the traditional phrase to say at the end of a meal to mean “thank you for the meal.”

This post was written by guest contributor, Sivan Weitz.

This Babe Eats was invited to take this class in exchange for an honest review and opinion.