The Joyce Chen Sushi Mold | Sybaritica

I picked this little item up at one of our local stores about a month or two before actually using it. I wasn’t especially in the market for any such device, having no immediate plans to make Nigiri style Sushi, but at a mere $6.00 it seemed worth giving a try… 

The kit comes with a short, but easy to follow instruction booklet and, as you can see, the actual tool comes in two parts… a deep 5-bay mold with holes in the bottom for facilitating the quick removal of the formed sushi pieces, along with a fitted ‘lid’ that can be used to press the rice into coherent blocks.

The instructions tell one to put whatever is being used as a topping into the individual molds first and then add the pre-made sushi rice. For this test-run, I used some smoked-salmon pieces.

Next, you just press the rice down using the lid and the invert the mold (without the lid) and press the formed Nigiri sushi pieces out.

The Verdict

Well, the pieces you see pictured above represent my very first try with this device and, on the whole, they don’t look too shabby. Indeed, they are certainly better looking than my first attempt at hand-forming Nigiri-zushi. The thin slices of smoked salmon were a bit fiddly for use here and I think that thicker pieces of sashimi would be easier and produce a prettier result. A bit of practice certainly won’t hurt either.

All in all, this little gadget is certainly worth the very cheap price at which it sells (available here at Amazon, if you are interested). My only complaint is that 6 ‘bays’ would be much better than 5. With an odd number, it is difficult to split the result between my wife and me. Beyond that, though, I thought it produced a decent result quite easily and the formed sushi pieces did not stick to the insides as I anticipated. I like making things, like sushi, the traditional way, but I will use this again…

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