What does uni taste like?
Uni tastes like a sweet, creamy custard of the sea: rich and buttery, briny like a fresh ocean breeze, with a soft texture that melts on your tongue.
Uni
sweet, creamy ocean custard
Uni is the Japanese name for sea urchin, and what you eat are its gonads (the orange tongues inside the spiky shell). Fresh uni is sweet, briny and rich, with a texture like soft custard or very cold butter. Good uni tastes clean, like the smell of the ocean on a cool day. Older uni goes bitter and metallic, which is how a lot of people get put off on their first try. Quality swings a lot, so it's worth eating somewhere that goes through plenty of it.
Where you’ll see it
As nigiri or gunkan (rice wrapped in seaweed with uni on top) at sushi bars, in the shell with a spoon, on toast, and folded into pasta with butter, where it melts into a sauce.
Order it if you love oysters, butter and creamy textures, and you trust the place's seafood.
Quick questions
- Does uni taste fishy?
- Fresh uni shouldn't. It tastes sweet, briny and buttery. Uni that tastes bitter, metallic or fishy is old, and it's a common reason people swear off it.
- What part of the sea urchin is uni?
- The gonads: the five orange tongues inside the shell that make the roe. People often call uni roe, but it's the organ, not the eggs.