Pressed sushi

oshi zushi

Oshi zushi, or pressed sushi, is the oldest of today’s sushi types, and the one that most closely resembles its ancestor. Nare zushi, the ancient form of sushi, involved packing fish and cooked rice tightly into a barrel or wooden press in order to let the rice slowly ferment and preserve the fish. While modern sushi is no longer a method of preservation, pressed sushi retains the practice of compacting the rice and toppings into a mold. Today, pressed sushi is made widely across Japan. There are many regional specialities, of which the most famous is battera, or marinated mackerel pressed sushi, from the city of Osaka.

Traditionally, pressed sushi is made in boxlike wooden molds, but they are not a prerequisite. We have used a 6 x 3 x 2in (15 x 7.5 x 5cm) wooden mold for most recipes in this section, but you can easily improvise with alternative molds that you may already have in your kitchen—cooking rings, cookie cutters, or even small coffee cups for making individual portions, or a small cake pan to form a larger sushi “cake” that you can cut into pieces.