Vegetarian Sushi

Vegetarian Sushi ベジタリアン寿司

Greg Goodmacher, March 2015

The popular sushi train, carrying its cargo of delicious meals, continues to chug across the world. Sushi shops are popping up across Brazil. California cuisine has adapted sushi. Sushi is even a choice at some local outdoor markets in Thailand. People on all inhabited continents are loving sushi -- with devastating costs to ocean life.

The first wild bluefin tuna auctioned off at Tokyo's famous fish market, Tsukiji, on the first of January sold for 4.5 million yen (about 40,000 US dollars). Why such an exorbitant price for a 180 kilogram fish? It is delicious. And we are eating bluefin tuna into extinction. The same situation applies to many other fish species that you probably enjoy eating. Fish populations are crashing. What are you going to do?

Vegetarian sushi with natto
Vegetarian sushi with asparagus

You could indulge in a feeding frenzy and enjoy the prime sushi while it lasts, ignoring the damage that overfishing and overconsuming does to the ocean, or the fact that your children and grandchildren will never have a chance to enjoy the same foods that you do.

Another choice is to reduce the amount of fish you consume at your next sushi feast. There are at least three ways to cut back while still enjoying sushi.

First, is choosing dishes that are made with fish slices that are often discarded. The most commonly eaten dish made with such “scraps” is chawan mushi, ingredients usually include nuts from the ginkgo tree, often shrimp, sometimes chicken and mushrooms.

Slices of flesh left after trimming fish for sushi, and other ingredients, are mixed into a covered cup of egg custard that is steamed. Often a few aromatic green mitsuba leaves float on top of the savory soft yellowish custard. The majority of sushi shops in Japan offer chawan mushi.

Vegetarian sushi

A lesser-known but very delicious fish dish is called arani, sometimes called aradaki. Cuts of fish that are too small for sushi or that are irregularly shaped because they originate between bones, near fins, or within the head are simmered in soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and cooking sake.

Served in a small bowl, this sushi restaurant meal resembles a fish stew. Not all sushi shops serve arani, though. Some sushi chefs are happy to prepare it, but may not always list it on the menu. Go ahead and ask for arani or aradaki, if you do not see these words on the menu. Hot arani on a cold winter night warms the body.

A very unusual type of sushi restaurant dish that takes most non-Japanese some time to pluck up the courage to try is honesenbei. This treat is best described as crackers made from deep fried fish bones. There is usually a thin web of fish between the bones. As you might expect, smaller fish, such as sardines, with thin and delicate bones are best.

Honesenbei are tastier and easier to eat than expected. Think of fishy crispy potato chips. Some Japanese izakaya and a small number of sushi shops serve honesenbei. Most restaurants dispose of the fish bones that are not eaten.

Some of the juiciest and softest morsels of fish flesh are on fish cheeks or collars, yet few people order the inexpensive but luscious Japanese dish known as kama. Usually, the collar bone of a larger fish, such as halibut or lingcod, is salted, roasted, and served with grated daikon. Many Westerners outside of Japan would never consider ordering this dish, yet most of the fish-eating Westerners living in Japan think it is wonderful.

Eating the portions of fish that other people ignore results in less waste of a precious resource, and when our stomachs are full with the dishes above, we are less likely to order and consume more. This is one way to reduce our personal consumption of seafood and to somewhat help to protect marine environments.

The second route we can take to help endangered or vulnerable fish species rebound is to become aware of fish species that are classified as endangered or vulnerable, to avoid eating those, and to only eat fish that are being sustainably harvested.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a Japanese organization that is disseminating such information. The best source of information regarding sustainable seafood is www.seafoodwatch.org, which is located in the United States.

The website recommends "which seafood to buy or avoid, helping you select items that are fished or farmed in ways that have less impact on the environment." You can even download a useful app to help you when ordering sushi.

The third and most effective choice is to order or prepare vegetarian or vegan sushi. Almost all sushi shops offer a few choices of vegetarian and vegan sushi. Three vegetarian options that just about every sushi shop offers are inarizushi, and tomagoyaki, and kappamaki.

Inarizushi is sushi rice that is stuffed into pockets of paper-thin tofu that has been sweetened and deep fried. The first step in preparing tomagoyaki sushi is to fold or roll a Japanese omelet again and again until it becomes an oval-shaped roll. Slice the roll into pieces and place those pieces on sushi rice. Sugar, soy sauce, and dashi in various amounts are added to the egg mixture before heating. Kappamaki is simply cucumber in a sushi roll.

Many vegetarian sushi dishes tend to be seasonal. Over the last decade the number of vegetarian sushi dishes offered at Japanese sushi shops has been incrementally increasing. More people need to learn to eat vegetarian sushi.

Sushi, like any other indigenous meal, is undergoing transitions as chefs from various countries and cultures experiment with it. Some new varieties include asparagus sushi, sushi with snow peas, and sushi rolls with walnuts and miso. A new world of sushi eating options is waiting for your palate. You can still enjoy sushi while reducing your fish intake. Vote with your mouth for a healthier planet.

Guide Books on Japan