Recipe: How to make sushi

If you have seen my What I Eat posts in the past, you will know that a dish that I make quite regularly is sushi. Sushi is my favorite food. However, good sushi doesn’t come cheap, so sometimes I’ll opt for making it myself. It is cheaper and a very satisfying, being quite laborious process. Below I am showing you what I do to create sushi. I’m sure that any sushi master will cringe if they’d ever see this, but it’s fool proof and pretty easy to do.

A serving of sushi with salmon, cream cheese and cucumber. You can use any ingredients you like to make sushi it seems. I find that you need only very little for the filling to make your rolls, so I usually only go for a few ingredients, because I don’t want to waste too much food. Other fillings I’ve used in the past are avocado, mango and different types of fish. When it comes to sushi the general rule is that the fresher your ingredients the better it will taste. So this is something you should make the day you got your groceries, preferably with fresh fish from the farmer’s market.

Prep time: 30 min + cooling 4 – 6 hours + rolling 30 mins. Total time: 7 hours max. Serves: 2.

Ingredients:

Rice:

• Sushi rice (75 grams per person, I used 150 grams)
• Sugar
• Rice vinegar

Filling:

• Salmon slices
• Cream cheese
• Cucumber

Rolls:

• More salmon slices
• Nori leaves (seaweed)

Condiments:

• Soy or tamari sauce
• Wasabi (If you can get a hold of it. Most store bought ‘wasabi’ is not real wasabi.)

Step 1: Prepare your rice. You can do so according to the package. This rice requires rinsing, welling, more rinsing and then finally boiling it with an exact amount of water until completely absorbed by the rice. Finally you have to let it steam for about 15 minutes.

Step 2: Add 1 table spoon of rice vinegar and 1 tea spoon of sugar for every 75 grams of rice you boiled to the rice. Stir well.

Step 3: Let the rice cool to room temperature. This will take several hours. I prefer to boil my rice in the morning and then prepare the rolls at night.

Step 4: Cut up your fillings into thin slices. 1/8 – 1/4 of a cucumber will be enough.

Step 5: Cut up your Nori leaves with a pair of scissors. If you want to use salmon on the outside lay that out as well.

As you can see I have a piece of paper that I use for measurement. That’s because I use a tool to create the rolls. You can also roll using one of the mats,  which really shouldn’t be too difficult. However, I happen to have this in my cupboards and it is really handy for creating any kind of rolls. It is by Leifheit if you’re interested. I don’t know how much it costs as it was a birthday gift a few years ago.

Step 6: Time to assemble the sushi!

1. Take your Nori leaf
2. Add some rice (this will be sticky so use two spoons)
3. Add your filling
4. Top up with rice

Step 7: Time to rock n roll!

1. Fold in the short end
2. Put the other end on top
3. Now pull!
4. Out comes your roll!

Step 8: Repeat steps 6 & 7 until all of your rice is gone.

Step 9: Take a sharp tipped knife to cut up your rolls into 2 – 3 sushi rolls. If you add cream cheese as a filling, make sure to clean your knife in between to ensure clean cuts every time.

And you’re all done! Making sushi is NOT difficult, especially not when you use the little roller thing I have. I usually split up this batch of sushi into two and make it into two separate meals. Or you could of course share it with someone! I use Tamari sauce instead of regular soy sauce as the latter gives me a stomachache and wasabi if I can find it.

How do you make sushi? Or if you never make it yourself:  what is your favorite type of sushi?