Can I become a sushi chef in 1 day? We all gotta eat and we all gotta learn new things sometimes. Now chefs can spend their entire career mastering the intricate knife cuts, the impeccable fish butchery, and the perfectly seasoned rice that makes sushi one of the greatest cuisines in the entire world. And I am gonna try and master it all in one day with zero preparation. It’s going to go poorly, but I do have an incredible teacher. Everyone, welcome chef Gon Lee from Sushi Takeda. You came prepared. Show me what’s inside there. It better be the nuclear codes or a bunch of cash. Oh my wallets and keys. Hi, my name is Gon Lee from Sushi Taketa and I’ve been making sushi for about 15 years. Today I’m gonna teach Josh how to make sushi nigiri. I’ve seen a couple of his videos and I think he is very funny guy and knowledgeable and funny guy. So for Josh’s test, I’ve be looking at his knife skills and follow the steps that I taught him. This is my yanagi. Pull it out. Pull it out. That Yanagi, and this is my gyuto, which my regular basis prep knife. Yeah. And this is my deba. I cut fish with it. And this is, uh, for veggies, vegetables. I cut veggies with it. Now, chef, you’ve prepared a series of challenges for me. How confident are you that someone with no preparation and almost no skill can pull these off? Uh, be honestly. Maybe 30% being gen, being generous. That’s pretty good. If I got 30%, I still would’ve dropped outta college, but you know, would’ve been higher than some grades that I got in classes. So that’s not too bad. Yeah, not too bad. Yeah. I’m excited to get to it though. You ready? Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go. Chef Gon. I’ve brought my personal pet fishes for you. Thank you so much for allowing us to cook with them to honor their bodies. Tell me about the first test today. We’re gonna make a shasu, which is a vinegar for sushi rice. So we got the scale out here. How much are you adding? Let’s do about 500 mil here. Okay. Is this the brand you would typically use in a high end sushi restaurant like Sushi Takeda? Um, not really. We actually use a better. This is the stuff in my house. So we have 500 mil, uh, 500 mil. Okay. Which is, let’s, let’s put 500 grams. Salt. Usually I put about 20%. So 520%. That’s about a hundred grams. Wow. That’s a lot more salt than I would’ve thought. Yeah, there’s a lot of seasoning goes in. I’ve heard sushi chefs say that people think of sushi as the fish, but really sushi is the rice? Right, yes. Rice. That makes sense. Rice is most important. Have you ever had sushi with really bad rice? Oh, yes, many times. Who made it the worst? Call ’em out right now in front of everybody. No, I can’t. Is it seven 11? Have you ever had the sushi? They got the little California rolls at seven 11. Oh no, I never had it before. You should try it. It’s the best sushi I’ve ever had, and I’m gonna put sugar. Sometimes it really is inedible, man. I’ve eaten a lot of those. Lots of sugar in it. About how much sugar? About a hundred grams. Okay. I need to be remembering this, like I stop talking about seven 11. Okay. Okay. So 500 grams, rice vinegar, a hundred grams sugar, a hundred gram of salt. Actually, I put 50 grams of salt. 50 grams of salt. A hundred grams of sugar. Mm-hmm. 500 m. I’m remembering math. Now we’re breaking down the fish. This is really something that I haven’t done a lot of. This looks like it gave birth to those two, or like this is the boss and these are, its two minions ready to do Its bidding. Yeah, they’re like little cousins. Little cousins. Yeah. This is the big cousin that takes ’em out to smoke weed in the back. Uh, yeah. Show me how you break these. Let’s cut this beautiful Shimaji. Actually, this is one of my favorite fish. Did you just turn… its eyeball so it was looking at you? Kind of. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. First, we’ll dehead it. Okay. On the head when we filet, there’s a rule always goes from belly back, back, belly, belly, back, back, belly. Right. This is like a PlayStation two cheat code kind of. Yeah. Up down next. Yeah. So you get infinite weapons in grand theft auto. Right. So we’re gonna. Give a little small line, just cut very shallow. So that knife can goes in. Mm-hmm. When, when the knife goes in, you wanna find where the bones are there, so you wanna glide it. Ta ta ta until your knife hits the spine. Okay. And you turn it around. That’s small knife line. Belly back. Back belly. Mm-hmm. Right belly back, back. Mm. Belly, back, belly. We’re gonna make a hit song after this, and once I hit the spine, change your angle to up and then you want to cut a little bit along the spine. Okay. Wanna put knives through like this? Uhhuh, grab a tail and goes, boom. Wow. It’s crazy ’cause you, you’re not seeing so much of what you’re cutting, but the fact that you can hear it and you can feel it from doing it for so long. Yeah. Damn. It’s a beautiful filet. Okay, now go the real speed that you would go in the restaurant. Lemme see it. Okay. Okay. Get this. Really crunch those bones. Don’t be delicate. Don’t be scared. Can’t be scared of fish. The fish is more scared of you. Oh, and one another side. When you, um, cut all the rib cages, uhhuh, you wanna, uh, get the space and get the angles up next, angles up, and then you wanna cut down the ribs. Wow. So you’re really, you’re not trying to avoid the bone, you’re trying to really cut through all that bone. Right. What do you do with this? Throw it on the barbecue. Yeah, we can. Yeah. Perfect. Alright, Josh, so now we’re gonna cure the fish. I’m just gonna do one, one filet. Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah. You can take the other one home. It’s our gift. Just do a little light salt. You want just filter it. Is this for texture or flavor or both? When you salt it inside, the moisture comes out. And then all the fishiness, we can get rid of the fishiness. We just, just lightly and then we just wait for another 10 minutes. Alright. Beautiful Chef. We have rice in a, in a, in a, what do you call that? Oh, you could, you could make up anything right now and I would believe you. I’m blank right now. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, Lily, you’re in. Chef Gon, you’re out. You’re in, in, she’s the master sushi chef. Hungiri. Yes. Hungiri. Yes. It’s just a wooden bowl that, uh, we mix, uh, sushi rice in. So rice cookers are just the standard way to make rice. And then you season it up in the Hungiri. Mm-hmm. Yes. That. Show me how you do it. Okay, so we have our hot rice here, steaming hot rice. I’m gonna, I’m gonna pour vinegar. You’re just doing that to disperse it evenly, right? Yes. Mm-hmm. You want the rice to be hot so it absorbs more. Um, actually we’re evaporating the vinegar. Ah, interesting. So you really want to use a hot rice? When we mix the rice, we call it, we’re cutting it’s kiri. So we’re actually gliding in between the rice partially. Little by little. Make sure there’s no, uh, rice clumps. Okay. May I? Oh please. Yeah. May I? I’ve washed my hands, I promise. What do you think? It’s seasoned so much more than you would expect in, in a certain way. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Like if I were making this at home, I don’t think I would’ve ever had the confidence to season it to that level. Hmm. But also thinking about the best sushi that I’ve ever had. That’s the flavor, right? In the restaurant. Do you ever do this? Nope. Yeah. Well that’s probably good. That’s why I use the pro. Next will be cleaning this. This one is done with curing. I usually spray it, but just dust out all the rest. The salt. Mm. And that’s equal parts? Water and vinegar. Water and vinegar, yes. Is there any reason for the vinegar or just Just the taste? I kill any bacteria sometimes. That’s how I clean myself too. You don’t have time to take a shower. You kind of just. We paper towels and vinegar, put it in the armpits. Um, and um, I’m gonna cut down the color. Watch and turn it around. We’ll just cut the ribcage. And when you cutting down the ribcage, um, you don’t want to saw it. You wanna always do a clean one. Stroke by one stroke. Okay. This is clean. Is that the bloodline that you’re cutting along, right? Yeah, bloodline and uh, bones. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so now that, uh, our fish is clean, I’m gonna show you how to make nigiri with this. Okay. Beautiful. First, we’re gonna skin them. Is there any trick to doing that? ’cause you made that look really easy. Ah, yeah. There’s a little trick. So when you diskin, the diskin, the fish, your knife angle is really important. You wanna keep the angle that when you sharpening the knife, if you’re sharpening the knife flat, you want to keep the knife flat if you’re putting 45 degrees or– Oh, interesting. And you’ve cut off like a little chunk that you’re leaving as an anchor and then using the towel anchor, right? Yes. Damn. And since I have a one sided blade, so I’m just gonna keep it flat and just little by little and you see this. Nice. Wow. So what part are you actually taking off? Because it looks like this is still some sort of skin or like subcutaneous something or other, right? Uh, so there’s a, a lot of fishes have a fat on their skin, so you wanna, uh, keep the, this little skin part. Yeah. Yeah. On the meat, as you see, if I scrape it, there’s a lot of fat coming out. Oh yeah. You can see the oil almost exude from it. Mm-hmm. So you wanna keep that fat nice on the skin. You wanna cut little big chunk, uh, on the tail side because they have a lot of fibers in it. Okay. So that’s gonna be chewy. So we just– Are you that throw in a soup? Yeah. You could throw the soup, grill it or eat it for lunch. Add it to the barbecue pot. Yep. Typical gritty size is you want to put. Two finger size, two finger width, and two finger length. Now, here’s the thing I’ve learned. Not all finger sizes are the same. No, don’t. That wasn’t dirty. I was literally talking about that. What if you have a six foot eight sushi chef, got big old fingers, then you make bigger sushi. Make bigger sushi, that’s how it works. You wanna use the whole blade here from back, slide that back towards you. Mm-hmm. So now that we have the fish, cut it. So let’s move on to making sushi. So first step, let’s grade the wasabi. Let’s do it, please. Now we have, now this is the real stuff. Yeah, this is a real, real home wasabi. Is this stuff expensive? Pretty expensive. Yes. Some good ones are, they go up to 50, 60 per pound. Damn. That’s crazy. Mm-hmm. Do you ever use the fake stuff in the restaurant and lie to people? Oh, I never lied, but I have used this. Is there any trick to this? Or you just go in a circle? Just go in a circle. Yeah. Did I make this up or is it, is this traditionally made out of shark skin? Supposedly, yes. Mm-hmm. This one’s not made of shark skin. Doesn’t look like it. But now there’s a metal, one metal grater, like different, different types of it. There’s no substitute for that real shark flavor. That’s what I’ll say as as a sushi chef myself. So we have the wasabi here. Beautiful. We have rice and we have tezu, which is just, uh, water for your hand. But tezu is not just the name for water. Tezu is simply water for your hand, right? Yeah. Got you. Te means hand, zu means water. So. Hand water. Hand water. And then at the end of the meal, you drink that like a shot. So you wanna lightly just wet your hand. Okay. And we’re gonna grab the rice here. And you want to roll it around it? Make a shape. I’m, I’m mimicking, I’m trying to, I’m trying to get the motion down. You’re kind of here, right? It’s like you’re rolling dice. Mm-hmm. Yes, exactly. Close your eyes. Bite your bottom lip, and roll the dice. Mm-hmm. Grab a piece of fish. Put wasabi, wasabi. Put rice on it. Mm-hmm. With your thumb, you wanna put a little hole in it. Oh. Because, uh, you wanna put little pocket and you wanna just press it down a little bit Lightly. Just divit, divit with the thumb. Mm-hmm. Press it down lightly and you want to turn it around. And now you wanna shape, turn, shape. When you’re sitting at a sushi bar, it looks so simple and natural. ’cause of course it is. But watching you actually do this up close and thinking about myself having to do it, it’s a lot more intricate of a hand movement. Yes. Actually there’s a few different types, uh, different style of making sushi. So one that I just did a kotegaishi means, means, uh, just you just flip your wrist. Mm-hmm. And there’s another, which is same thing. No. Put this two finger, you wanna kind of shape it uhhuh, and then put a whole divot and then you just go, oh, on your hand. And then shape chef, the dish is done. Almost just one more. One more thing. I wanna put soy sauce. Beautiful. So this way you don’t gotta dip it. Mm-hmm. But when I go to the all you can eat sushi bar. Mm. This is a negidama. Just a simple green onion and ginger. This looks so good. Alright, thank you. Can we eat it? Please do. Go ahead. Oh my. Will you eat one with me? Sure. Do you eat with your hands or chopsticks? What do you eat? I use hands. My guy. Oh, natural. That will bear eat salmon out of a river. Hmm? Gimme a hug, brother. Hug. Thank you. Mine’s not gonna taste as good as that. I just wanna make something edible, and I think I can. Though you’ve trained me well, I feel good about this. I hope so. I have faith in you. I feel very confident. I have no formal training, but Chef Gon, you’re my boy. And also I’ve watched Jro Dreams of Sushi about 37 times. So let’s do this. Okay, we’re gonna take. Not the first thing we were gonna do, man, you gotta make the vinegar for the rice. Dammit. All right. My hands are covered in fish, but that’s perfectly fine. So he did this in a 10 to one ratio. I don’t know how to work the scale. You gotta do the tornado spin. This is how you chug a beer the fastest. You get the tornado going, shove it right down the gult. All right? 393 grams. So now, no, no maths times, everything. Multiply it by 0.8. So that means he did do, dammit. Did he do a hundred grams of salt or, oh, come on, Josh. Typically you would do more sugar than salt. He did salt first. A hundred grams of salt, 50 grams of sugar. So we’re gonna go 80 grams of salt. 40 grams of sugar. That seems like so much salt. Oh no. Okay. 40 grams of sugar. I feel like he did the opposite now. I’m so sorry, man. No, you’re doing right. It’s still gonna be, it’s gonna be good again. If, if any of this is really bad, we’re gonna make soup Chef Gon, I’m gonna make you the best, the best chapino you’ve ever had, brother. We just need a chapino master to teach me how to make it. Okay. Shimaji. Boom. This is where I’m confident, okay. We’re using his knife. We’re gonna cut the head off, follow the line underneath that. He did it. He did it a lot cleaner than I did. But listen, I got a fish head. Well, okay. You know, big mouth belly bash. Nice job. Never looked so good. Oh yeah. I forgot to spin the eyeball towards me. I Alright. Belly. That’s right. Back. Back belly. So what he did is he ran his knife along. I kind of, I kind of don’t do that. Run it along the belly. And now you wanna hear like a ta ta ta ta ta of the bones breaking. I feel this spine. I feel the spine said the surgeon. Okay, here’s the thing. He can’t be gentle with the fish. He’s already dead. Okay. Shallow cut. Feel the spine, seems like a storm. Back to the belly. Belly backpack. I feel like I don’t remember what he did, but I know what I want to do and I’m gonna do what I want to do, which is as long as I get your job done. And I think that’s bone marrow. Did you think he went that way? Mm-hmm. Do I think he went that way? Uh, that’s a lot of pressure for fish. Shit. Sorry. That was a, just damnit. Okay. You know what? No. Hey, he said knife angles important. Where’s the one? Stroke Not, not saw your fish. What the hell’s happening Here? Let’s flip it open. So you’re working with, oh my God, no. Wow. Look at all the meat. No. No, come on, Josh. Oh my God. I want you to know that I, I am trying my best. I say that when people flip me off in traffic all the time. I just go, I’m, I’m really trying my best with this. I’m not trying to do bad. I’m going backhand on the flake. ’cause I feel like I was doing something pretty good beforehand. Not the belly was supposed to go belly back, back belly knife angle down. ’cause I believe what he was talking about. Is that there is, there’s only an edge on this side, so if I keep the knife angle down like that, I think I’ll be able to use, okay. Oh, watch this. Just, okay. Watch your finger. Oh. Oh. I’m scared to watch this. Oops. Slowly. Okay. Uh. Shit. Watching him here is actually, this is a lot more spinal cord than here. More fun than I thought. And it takes some of salt. Give it a nice little light cure. Just a little bit of sprinkle, sprinkle up and then we’re just gonna flip it back on here. Oh wow. That’s a lot of salt. I don’t remember how much salt he put on it. I wasn’t watching. I was trying to make jokes. I was trying to make jokes. This is my life. So now that Oshimaji has been expertly broken down, what we’re gonna, what we’re going to do is we’re gonna salt it because that eliminates some of the fish flavor. And then also, yeah, it, it season, you also need to season your fish. I gotta wa, I gotta wash my hands and just go think. I need to think, Hey, first quarter is over and we might be down by 20 points, but you know what? We still got a lot of spirit in us. Let’s just taste this vinegar that now I’m fully sure that I messed up the ratios. Ah, I need to redo the vinegar. I, let me think. Just everybody stop watching and let me think. I need to make him something edible. There’s definitely supposed to be more sugar. There’s always more sugar than salt. And a recipe for anything. 200 is enough. Multiplying by 0.4. This is where you fudged up last time, dude. So a hundred times 0.4 40. So 200 grams at, we’re gonna do 40 grams sugar. Hate myself. What? Bring sugar. And let’s just go light on the salt here, Josh. 20 grams of salt. I just, I’m so scared now. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Okay, now fish. Check this out. Check this out. Fish is cured. This is my beauty filet. Now. It’s also awful. We’re gonna dip this in equal parts, vinegar, and water, and we’re just going to gently wash the cure. Oh, this makes me sad. But now we’re gonna go ahead and we’re gonna run our knife along the bloodline and then we’re gonna skin it. Uh, that is what I believe the next step is, and that’s just what the hell I’m gonna do. If anybody has any problem with it, you gotta take it up with me. Why? Why can’t I just even cut through? There’s so many bones here. Clean. There seems to be a ton of bones clean. The rib cage, we have to skin it. Chef Gon made it look very easy, and I remember this part very vividly. I’ll show you what he did. This is my beauty guide. This is where the nigiri is gonna come from. Okay. So he kind of, he did this, kept the skin sort of attached, flipped that, used it as an anchor, grabbed the towel. Bingo. Bingo. Yeah, he might want to use a under knife ’cause uh, deba is a little too thick for skinny. It’s pulling so far. God damnit, I lost my anchor. Okay, let’s season our rice, shall we? Maybe, Is that what, is that what I’m supposed to do? Now we’re gonna take our rice. I get that. Ow, ow. That’s fine. Ow, ow. Gonna put some rice into the hung. Let’s taste this guy. Significantly better. And then what? What he did we’re, we’re just eyeballing it here. He kinda splashed it over and he was kind of here and then now he cut the rice so gently, he took every little grain kind of cut through it. I’m gonna taste the rice and…. close. Hear me out though. I’m gonna add a little bit of the gross vinegar ’cause I under salted my vinegar. Add a little bit to this guy. I say he didn’t have to make, really make the new vinegar ’cause it could be really salty and strong. Now feel like he switched to this knife earlier than I– Anyways. Now you wanna cut this at an angle, which angle? And he cut off a solid snacking chunk. He did one. One strong clean gliding cut. I feel good about this now I just need a plate. Am I missing a very important step? Putting mine on a black plate to be the obvious villain in the story? This is the cowboy wearing a black hat. Come on, figure it out. Nice and wet. Let’s do it. Little ball of rice. Little ball of rice that that’s way bigger. But I have big fingers bigger. The sushi chef, bigger than the fingers. The finger rice, he kinda moved it around a lot. There was a divot at some point. We’re just gonna get this into a ball and they’re gonna put like my thumb in there. And then we’re gonna take a piece of fish that, that fish is just gonna go on there. There was a, a flip chef going, I’m sorry man. And then you’re doing it. Okay. Wasabi. Huh? I forgot the wasabi. I forgot to grate the was. I have to grate the wasabi. I have to grate the wasabi. Go ahead. I could do this if I worked in a sushi bar. I could just be the wasabi Great guy. God. God. Okay. Little bit of wasabi, a little bit more, and then I think I can just kind of flip that guy back on. Give it some love. Smudge the plate up. Good. We brush a soy. You ever fail at something in your life? You ever do it in front of a lot of people watching? A little bit of salt. You didn’t put a lot on there. Little dollop of Tama. Ah, chef. What we prepared for you today is uh, nigiri of Shima Aji. I’m so sorry. Is chef going still here? Yep. Ah, dammit. All right. Now we’re gonna have chef going come in and taste it. Sorry Chef. I don’t wanna look you in the eyes. I feel shame. Oh, you did. You did great. You did good. You did good on. Get on, uh, belly. Yeah. Thank you. Do you want to taste this? Oh, sure, yes. Does this look edibles? It looks edible, yes. Okay. Which one? Here, I’ll let you take the first pick. Try compact. Come pie. So all the ingredients are there. So I taste the, I taste the fish. I taste the ity. Uhhuh. It tastes good, but just, um. The fishes and wrapping wise, yeah, I think that was a no-no, there’s a lot of room for, but, uh, yeah, it tastes, tastes, tastes good. How’s the seasoning on the rice? Also, I have two different vinegars for you to choose from. One is bad. The other’s also bad. No, actually, uh, I think this, you might feel like it’s really strong, but once she, once it mixed in the rice, it’ll actually, Hmm. Yeah. This is actually. I pretty good. Dang it. I didn’t trust myself. What was my biggest mistake with the fish? ’cause I had a lot more trouble than I thought I would. You made it look too easy. It’s your fault. So first you didn’t go belly, backpack, belly. I saw you belly back and belly back. So that was the one mistake you made. You made it so easy for me and I still messed up. You’re going sawing, uhhuh the fish I saw. Yeah. Most of the time you’re sawing. Yeah, you told me not to saw and I saw it a lot. Did I at least use the right knives for the right tasks? I see a scale. Yeah, sorry. Knife wise. Uh, everything was good. I mean, you could use your knife as your, how, how, how you comfortable you are. I mean, as long as you get your job done, it’s, and did I get my job done? Oh, please, Jeff. Feel free to touch anything. Oh yeah. Skin looks good. If you were to give me a grade, like in school mm-hmm. What would you, what grade would you give me? Um, what’s the. How do I grade 30%? My teachers told that, and they called that an F minus. F minus. F minus. That’s probably, yeah, that’s, that’s not bad. I once got a negative 12% on a chemistry test. That is true. But the taste, I’ll give 70. That’s pretty good, man. Mm-hmm. Just the, the process was. Yeah. Yeah, A little bit. This is why in the restaurant you hide me in the back. Right. You don’t let the customers see me. Yeah. You’ll be washing dishes. I great though. I’ll move up to grading the wasabi after a year of dish washing, right? Yeah. Yeah. There’s always chance. Uh, truly. It was so awesome to watch you at your craft. You’re obviously a master chef Gon, you’re the man. Thank you so much, brother. Thank you. Everyone. Check out Sushi Takeda. You got anything else to plug? Yeah, please come, Come to Sushi Takeda and have have some sushi. The Good Mythical Marathon sale is here today through Sunday. Spend more to save more on some of your favorites at mythical.com.