In Japanese cuisine, Sushi (寿司, Sushi?) is a food made of vinegared rice combined with various toppings or fillings, which includes seafood and can also include vegetables, mushrooms, eggs or meat. Sushi toppings may be raw, like most fish; cooked; blanched; or marinated.
Sushi as an English word has come to refer to the complete dish (rice together with toppings); this is the sense used in this article. The original term Japanese: 寿司 sushi (-zushi in some compounds such as makizushi), written with kanji (Chinese characters) refers to the rice, not the fish or other toppings.[1]
Outside of Japan, sushi is often misunderstood to mean only clumps of rice topped with raw fish or even raw fish by itself, as well to refer to other raw-seafood dishes, such as sashimi (sushi and sashimi are considered distinct in Japan).
There are various types of sushi. Sushi served rolled in nori (dried sheets of laver, a kind of pressed and dried alga) is called maki (rolls). Sushi made with toppings laid onto hand-formed clumps of rice is called nigiri; sushi made with toppings stuffed into a small pouch of fried tofu is called inari; and sushi made with toppings served scattered over a bowl of sushi rice is called chirashi-zushi, or scattered sushi.
