RECIPES / TECHNIQUE
RECIPES / TECHNIQUE
RECIPES / TECHNIQUE
Sushi Rice, Done Properly
Sushi rice is not a variety, it is a preparation. Here is how we cook and season our Japonica so it holds together in a roll without ever going sticky or heavy.
BY MERYL KENNEDY
CEO AND FOUNDER AT 4SISTERS / AUGUST 17, 2026
MAKES 6 CUPS
MAKES 6 CUPS
MAKES 6 CUPS
ON THIS PAGE
Overview
Ingredients
Rinse and Soak
Cook and Season
PREP
45 min
COOK
25 min
MAKES
6 cups
RICE
Japonica
Start With the Right Grain
Using It
FAQ
RICE WE USED
Sushi rice is a preparation, not a variety. What you buy is Japonica, a short to medium grain rice, and what makes it sushi rice is rinsing it correctly and folding seasoned vinegar through it while it is still hot.
Japonica Sushi Rice
32 oz (2 lb) bag
This is the part worth understanding before you cook anything. Japonica grains are shorter and rounder than the long grain rice most American kitchens keep, and they carry a different starch balance. More of their starch is amylopectin, which is the sticky one. That is the entire reason a piece of nigiri holds its shape in your fingers and a grain of long grain rice will not.
We mill our Japonica Sushi Rice on our own farm in northeast Louisiana, which is not where most people expect sushi rice to come from. Our father Elton started growing rice here in the 1960s, and the Louisiana Delta turns out to suit Japonica well.
Arborio White Rice
32 oz (2 lb) bag
Two things trip people up. The first is under-rinsing, which leaves loose surface starch on the grains and gives you a gluey mass instead of distinct sticky grains. The second is stirring the seasoning in rather than cutting it in, which crushes the grains you just cooked carefully.
SEE OUR RICE
Rinse until the water runs clear, usually four or five changes. You are washing off surface starch, not the starch inside the grain.
Use a 1 to 1 ratio by volume after soaking. Japonica needs far less water than long grain rice.
Season the rice hot. Cold rice will not absorb the vinegar mixture.
Never refrigerate finished sushi rice. It turns hard and chalky within a couple of hours.
Ingredients
2 cups 4Sisters Japonica Sushi Rice
2 cups cold water, for cooking
1 piece kombu, about 2 inches, optional
5 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar
2 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tsp fine sea salt
Rinse and Soak
1
Rinse until the water runs clear
Put the rice in a bowl, cover it with cold water, and swirl it with your fingers. The water will turn milky almost immediately. Pour it off and repeat four or five times until the water is close to clear.
Be gentle. The goal is to rub the loose starch off the outside of each grain, not to grind them against each other. Broken grains release interior starch and that is what makes rice gummy.
2
Soak, then drain
Cover the rinsed rice with fresh cold water and let it soak for 30 minutes so the grains hydrate all the way through instead of just at the surface. Drain it in a sieve for 15 minutes before cooking. Skipping the soak gives you grains that are soft outside and chalky in the middle.
3
Mix the seasoning
Combine the rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan and warm it over low heat, stirring just until the sugar and salt dissolve. Do not let it boil. Take it off the heat and let it cool to room temperature while the rice cooks.
Sushi rice is a preparation, not a variety. The grain is Japonica. The technique is what makes it sushi rice.
Cook and Season
4
Cook the rice
Put the drained rice and 2 cups of cold water in a heavy pot with a tight lid, tucking in the kombu if you are using it. Bring it to a boil over medium-high, then drop the heat to low and cook covered for 12 minutes. Take it off the heat and let it stand, lid on, for 10 more minutes.
Do not lift the lid during either stage. In a rice cooker, use the same 1 to 1 ratio and the standard white rice setting.
5
Cut in the seasoning
Turn the hot rice out into a wide, shallow bowl, ideally wood or glass rather than metal. Remove the kombu. Pour about a third of the vinegar mixture over the surface, then use a wooden paddle or spatula to slice through the rice at an angle and fold it over, rather than stirring in circles.
Add the rest in two more additions, folding between each. Fan the rice as you work if you have someone to help, which cools it faster and gives the grains a slight gloss.
Stop when the rice is around body temperature and every grain looks glossy and separate but clings when pressed. You should have about 6 cups. Cover it with a clean damp cloth and use it within a few hours, kept at room temperature.
Taste it on its own before you build anything. Properly seasoned sushi rice should be noticeably tangy and just barely sweet when eaten plain, because the fish, nori, and soy sauce that go with it will pull the seasoning back toward the middle.
Properly seasoned rice holds a shape when pressed and still reads as separate grains.
TIP FROM THE FARM
Save the cloudy water from your first two rinses for houseplants or the garden. It is just starch and water, and on our farm nothing that came out of a rice grain gets thrown away if we can help it. Our mill runs a closed-loop process that loses less than 1% of every grain we bring in.
Using It
Use it warm for nigiri, hand rolls, and maki. Wet your hands before you shape it, or it will stick to you rather than to itself.
It is just as good as the base of a chirashi bowl, which is the easiest way to use a batch without any rolling at all. Spread the seasoned rice in a bowl, lay sashimi, cucumber, avocado, and pickled ginger on top, and finish with sesame and shredded nori.
Any leftovers become onigiri. Press the rice into triangles around a spoonful of filling, wrap a band of nori around the base, and eat them the same day. Japonica is a genuinely versatile grain, and the whole species is worth reading about through USA Rice, the industry body I have been fortunate to chair. For the long grain side of our range, our guide to cooking fluffy jasmine rice takes the opposite approach to almost every step above.
Questions We Get
â–¾ What is the vinegar ratio for sushi rice?
For 2 cups of uncooked Japonica, use 5 tablespoons of unseasoned rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 2 teaspoons of fine sea salt. That works out to roughly 2 and a half tablespoons of vinegar per cup of dry rice. If you are using a pre-seasoned sushi vinegar, skip the sugar and salt entirely, because they are already in the bottle.
â–¾ Can I use long grain rice instead?
Not for anything you need to hold a shape. Long grain varieties like our jasmine and parboiled white are higher in amylose, the starch that keeps grains fluffy and separate, which is the opposite of what sushi needs. If you cannot find Japonica, our Arborio White Rice is a closer substitute, since it is also a short to medium grain with a high amylopectin content. It will be softer than proper sushi rice, but it will hold together.
â–¾ Why can't I refrigerate sushi rice?
Cold makes cooked rice starch recrystallize, a process called retrogradation, and the grains go hard and dry within a couple of hours. Seasoned sushi rice is meant to be held at room temperature under a damp cloth and used the same day. The vinegar in the seasoning is doing some preservation work, which is part of why it was there historically in the first place.
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