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alzee76 t1_iusufe2 wrote

Reply to comment by Scoobydoomed in TIL Fish is not the main component of sushi, it's rice by TranquillizeMe

> Raw fish with rice = Nigiri

Doesn't have to be raw fish, can be virtually any topping.

> Rice rolled with seaweed and stuffed with other ingredients (fish and/or vegetables) = Sushi

That's not "sushi", it's maki.

Nigiri and maki are both types of sushi; they're just abbreviations for the full names "nigirizushi" and "makizushi".

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Scoobydoomed t1_iusyg5r wrote

You're right, Nigiri can be with anything, avocado or tamago for instance. I did not know that about both being types of sushi though, learn something every day.

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alzee76 t1_iusyx9z wrote

Sure. As the OP discovered, the rice is the important part of "sushi" and everything that uses it is called sushi as far as I know. You just stick a different word on the front to describe the kind of sushi it is, then in informal speech or over time, the suffix gets dropped.

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Chemical_Enthusiasm4 t1_iusz18y wrote

Where does onigiri fit into this schema?

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alzee76 t1_iuszdad wrote

Well onigiri isn't sushi, so it doesn't.

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Chemical_Enthusiasm4 t1_iut0ay3 wrote

I was curious about the words, not the food. It looks like the base word nigiru means to clench or roll in the hands.

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alzee76 t1_iut0qlo wrote

> I was curious about the words, not the food

Oh hah, sorry. I can't think of anything like that offhand, but another example of the same sort of Japanese approach to food naming is the "yaki" suffix which means cooking but usually means frying when used in the name of the food, giving you yakiniku (fried meat), yakitori (fried chicken), yakisoba (fried soba noodles), etc.

ETA: yakitori is more like grilled chicken than fried, which is called karage, but.. can't win 'em all.

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