Why your expensive ikura sushi comes with cheap cucumber slices

Have you ever felt short-changed when the ikura sushi you ordered comes with cucumber slices taking up the space where even more salmon roe should be?

Turns out, chefs who serve the sushi this way are not trying to stint on the expensive delicacy.

The cucumber is there to make your sushi taste better, RocketNews24 quoted experts as saying.

For the uninitiated, the proper way to eat sushi is to dip the fish, not the rice, in soy sauce.

You can't turn ikura sushi upside down to do that because all that salmon roe will fall off. So how are you supposed to incorporate the soy sauce into your ikura sushi?

This is where the cucumber slices come into play.

Dip them in the soy sauce using your chopsticks, and place them back on top of the rice.

Now you know.

huizhen@sph.com.sg