Is the Wasabi You Eat With Sushi Even Real?

Sushi is undoubtedly the most popular of all Japanese dishes in the world and in India. If you love this delicacy prepared with rice, vegetables and raw seafood, then you must be familiar with its condiment wasabi as well. But is the spicy green paste served to you besides your sushi, actually wasabi? It might disappoint all the sushi lovers out there but what you have been having all along thinking to be wasabi, is actually something else. Wasabi, or Wasabia Japonica, is a part of the plant family Brassicaceae which also includes horseradish and mustard. A paste prepared from the rhizomes of this plant is what that is used as an accompaniment to spice up the flavour of sushi and other food items. The regular sellers only put a very small ratio of the actual wasabi in the paste and use other alternatives like horseradish, mustard and food colouring to recreate the flavour. Since these plants belong to the same family, the process becomes easy and the pungent taste is also not compromised.

Fresh wasabi is rarely ever found in store-bought products. The real thing is not included in most products since it is incredibly expensive. The high cost is justified because of the process involved in growing it.

Business Insider posted a 6-minute-long video on its official Twitter handle showing the process of how wasabi is made along with reasons for its expensive price.

The plant of Wasabi is difficult to grow and it can only be grown alongside the streams flowing through the rocky mountain beds in Japan, which provide them the specific conditions that they need to thrive. It is known to be the hardest plant to grow commercially due to the special environmental requirements.

Wasabi is still mostly grown in Japan but The Wasabi Company emerged as the first company in Europe to grow it for selling purposes.

Read all the Latest News and Breaking News here