Sushi rice & Sushi vinegar

The preparation of sushi rice starts from before night, preparing the right amounts of sushi vinegar. The rice cooking takes about 1 hour, combining them and settle the rice takes another 2.5 hours before ready to make any sushi. However sushi rice is not ideal to leave it more than the day you made; so you may want to start preparing the rice from the morning of when you want to serve sushi.

Sushi vinegar

You can buy a bottle of pre-made "Sushi vinegar", but the home made one can make it even fit to your taste.
Below is my favorite balance, you may adjust to fit your taste, but don't reduce sugar too much as the sugar helps the sushi rice shiner and gathered well.
See the Rice part to calculate the required cups of rice then multiply below Ingredients by the number of cups.

Ingredients (for 1 cup of rice)
30g sugar (preferably the Japanese white sugar but it can be substituted by the granulated sugar)
10g salt
45ml rice vinegar

Method
Just mix them well in a large bowl and leave it over night.

Rice
How much Sushi rice should we prepare? I would say 2 cups a person. Unlike other dinner, when you make sushi, you most likely eat only sushi. Usually I cock 1.2 cups of rice per person to count but for sushi day, I cook the rice more.

Ingredients
# of cups rice as you need
A spoon of sake per pot
water as needed

Following the How to cook Japanese rice in a pot post, cook necessary amount of rice but only one change: after you measured the water just as the regular rice, then take out a tbsp of water from the pot then pour a tbsp of sake instead.

Combine them to prepare sushi rice
Combining the sushi vinegar and rice is a matter of speed. Second pair of hand is really helpful for this process if you are not used to it.

Ingredients
Cooked rice and sushi vinegar from above, or about 40ml regular bottle of sushi vinegar per cup of rice.

Tools you need:
- a bowl
The best if you have Handai - bamboo bowl like this:

If not, improvise by a large shallow bowl like this:

I'm using a bowl something like this; it was from Tesco long ago.
or a large Pyrex dish like this:

- a spoon
The best is to use bamboo or plastic shamoji spoon like this:

If not, improvise by a regular large serving spoon.
* Do not use a cooking wooden spoon.

- a fan
The best is to find a Japanese fan like this:

If not, improvise by... anything, like a folded news paper, a note book etc...

- a tea towel
Tea towel like this type - cotton, cheep, thin, without strings to come out - is the best:

Method
1. Prepare this just before rice is done: wet the tea towel with cold water and squeeze out water well. Wet the bowl and spoon under running cold water and drain out water easily.
2. Once rice is cooked, put all out the rice from the pot to the center of lightly wet bowl. (nicer if you can ask someone else to help this aside of you)
3. Immediately pour over the measured sushi vinegar all over the rice, then using a wet spoon, move the spoon as cut the mass of rice in to big slices from once side to other, like slicing the sushi vinegar into between rice grains.
4. Once you cutting through the mass of rice from once side to other, the rice should be kind of spread over the bowl; now using the spoon, turn the rice over from the bottom of the bowl, little by little (but quickly!).
If rice start to stick to the spoon, wet it again.
5. Turn the bowl 90 degree (nicer if you can ask someone else to help this aside of you) then repeat the slicing movement now with turning over to mix them; try not to leave some big mass of rice without cutting through. Repeat one more time if you need. The key is to mix the rice with sushi vinegar enough but not too much - too much mixing them makes too sticky rice and it doesn't shine.
6. Once they are mixed enough, then use a fan or any improvised product to run the wind over the rice for 10-20 sec. Turn over the rice using the spoon and repeat it again. (nicer if you can ask someone else to help in turn)
Point: run the wind from about 30 cm over the rice and move fan in large sections so the wind can hit all rice by every brow and take the steam off from the rice. By here you'll see the rice start to get shinier.
7. Now cover the top of the bowl by the wet towel, leave it at cool place (but not cold) over 2 hours. This is not only waiting for the rice to cool down but settling the vinegar into the rice.
8. Ready to use the sushi rice for any sushi cooking.