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Neta (ネタ): The Sushi Toppings Everyone Loves

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Neta in Japanese is usually referred to as the topping for sushi, or sushi neta. It’s most often used with nigiri because that’s the sushi that’s topped with fish whereas other types of sushi are often rolled, but it can be used to mean all sushi topping ingredients.

With neta, together with sumeshi (the vinegared sushi rice) and nori you can make makizushi.

It’s said that neta originally came from the word tane(タネ), which is the same characters in reverse order.

Tane means to seed so it could be that adding the toppings for sushi is as to throw seeds on top of the land.

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Joost Nusselder, the founder of Bite My Bun is a content marketer, dad and loves trying out new food with Japanese food at the heart of his passion, and together with his team he's been creating in-depth blog articles since 2016 to help loyal readers with recipes and cooking tips.