Key difference: Sushi is mainly cooked rice with vinegar combined with other ingredients, usually raw fish or other seafood. Maki is a type of sushi roll which is sushi rolled in seaweed.

Sushi is the most popular Japanese dish known worldwide. Sushi is mainly cooked rice with vinegar combined with other ingredients, usually raw fish or other seafood. Sushi is mainly made up of two parts, shari and neta. Shari is the cooked rice with vinegar, while neta refers to the various other ingredients. There are many types of sushi; nigiri -zushi (hand shaped sushi), oshi-zushi (pressed sushi), maki-zushi (rolled sushi) and chirashi-zushi (scattered sushi). Sushi, literally translated means sour tasting, this is mainly because of the vinegar rice and fermented fish, which was originally used to make sushi.

Maki-zushi is a type of sushi that is usually rolled up in nori (seaweed). It is also sometimes rolled up in a thin omelette, soy paper, cucumber, or shiso (perilla) leaves. Maki-zushi is the most commonly known sushi. Maki-zushi, which means rolled sushi, is also called norimaki (nori roll) or makimono (variety of rolls). There are various types of maki-zushi, including futomaki (thick, large or fat rolls), hosomaki (thin rolls), temaki (hand roll) and uramaki (inside-out roll).

The different types of sushi are:

• Chirashizushi – bowl of shari (vinegar rice) topped with fresh raw meat or fish, sliced into thin pieces (sashimi) and other garnishes.
• Inarizushi – shari filled in a pouch of tofu, then fried.
• Narezushi – a traditional form of fermented sushi. Rice served with fish that is skinned, gutted, and fermented for six months with salt.
• Nigirizushi – an oblong mound of rice topped with wasabi and neta (fish and other ingredients), which may include salmon, tuna, and other seafood such as octopus, freshwater eel, sea eel, squid, and sweet egg, which are bound to the rice by a thin strip of nori.
• Oshizushi – pressed sushi in the shape of a square. Ingredients are topped with rice which is pressed together with the help of a wooden mold.
• Makizushi – neta (fish and other ingredients) rolled in shari and nori (seaweed) with the help of a bamboo mat (makisu). It is a long cylinder, which is cut and served into 6-8 pieces.

Types of makizushi include:

• Futomaki – a large cylindrical piece with a diameter of five to six centimeters, about 2 – 2.2 inches, filled with two to three ingredients and shari rolled in nori. Is often vegetarian.
• Hosomaki – a small cylindrical piece with a diameter of two and a half centimeters, about 1 inch, filled with just one ingredient, usually tuna, cucumber, kanpyō, thinly sliced carrots, or, avocado, with shari and rolled in nori.
• Temaki – a large cone-shaped piece of nori filled with various ingredients. It is meant to be eated with hands.
• Uramaki – a medium-sized cylindrical piece filled with two or more ingredients, where the rice is outside of the nori.

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