【Reading】たまご

【English Name】Egg (Tamago)

In nigiri sushi, "tamago" refers to a piece in which atsuyaki-tamago—thick rolled omelet sweetened with dashi and sugar—is combined with shari. Because craftsmen apply their own ingenuity to the degree of cooking and the blend of dashi, it has long been valued as a yardstick for measuring a shop's skill.

"Tamago" can be written with two characters in Japanese: 卵 and 玉子. Especially when expressing a cooked chicken egg, the custom of using the character 玉子 has become widespread, and this kanji is also readily adopted for sushi toppings that have been heated.

The chicken egg, richly containing protein, fat, minerals, and vitamins, is an ingredient with about 80 kcal of energy in a single S-size egg. The tamago grilled at sushi restaurants is basically finished by layering batter combining sugar, mirin, and dashi many times over, and it is not unusual for shops to take the approach of mixing in ground shrimp or white-fish surimi.

Fish-roe toppings such as ikura, kazunoko, and tobiko are sorted into a separate category from "tamago." Fish-derived eggs are generally served either whole with the ovary or loosened into a granular form and processed, fundamentally differing from bird eggs in both cooking method and form of serving.