I’ve always thought that sushi could only be eaten just after it was prepared, as the raw fish needs to be refrigerated to keep it fresh, whereas the rice will be ruined if you refrigerate it. Both the texture and the flavor of sushi rice will turn into cardboard from refrigeration. So I only prepare sushi when I know I can eat it straight away, and I only eat sushi where it is prepared to order and served straight away. And I never used to eat supermarket sushi, which is of course refrigerated.

That is, until I discovered that you can regenerate supermarket sushi using sous vide! I already knew of course that everything gets better using sous vide, but it had never occurred to me before that would also apply to sushi.

The first problem I had to solve was how to vacuum seal it without squishing the sushi. That was easy — just freeze for 24 hours…

…and then you can vacuum seal it easily without any problems.

I did a lot of experiments to find out the best time and temperature. I got the best results by regenerating the frozen sushi for 8 hours at 23C/73F, which is Japanese room temperature.

After 8 hours at 23C/73F, the supermarket sushi will taste like it has just been prepared freshly by a sushi chef!

If you’ve made it this far and are seriously considering to try this, please note the date of this post 😉 It is not safe to cook anything sous vide at a temperature below 52C/126F for more than 4 hours. And for good sushi, the only option is freshly prepared.