Make Your Own Sushi

• July 05, 2013  |
• by Kirstin Uhrenholdt

Let’s make sushi tonight! This is a great hands on dinner project that everyone no matter what age can get involved in! If you have little kids you could give each child the job they can handle best, Jimmy Bob can spread rice, Julie is good at placing the vegetables and Nancy can roll like no one’s business.

If your hunger is greater than the roll, make rice bowls! Put a cup of rice into each bowl, throw on some toppings and finally tear up some nori and let it flutter down on top. Instead of nori use lettuce or cabbage to make handheld wraps.

First you need to get a couple of helpful tools and some ingredients you might not have on hand. Look in the Asian section of your supermarket, or order them online.

You need

Each person needs a small bamboo mat called Makisu.
Cooked sticky rice (look at the package, it will say short grain, cal-rose or sushi rice) about 1 1/2 cups per person
Some seasoned rice vinegar
Sheets of toasted nori seaweed cut in half lengthwise
Soy sauce
Some wasabi, (optional)
Picked ginger (optional)

For the sushi fillings, some suggestions are:

Asparagus quickly steamed and cut in half length wise
Cucumbers peeled and cut into long strips
Carrots cut into thin long strips (or grated into strips)
A thin omelet cut into strips
Avocados cut into strips and tossed with lemon
Peppers cut into strips.
Sesame seeds

And I am sure you can come up with some even better ideas. Just bare in mind that you will be wrapping everything lengthwise, so long thin vegetables (cucumber strips) are more practical than short vegetables (peas) as they will be likely to shoot out in mid bite.

To Make

Start out by making a big pot of sticky sushi rice, since different brands cook in different ways I am going to suggest following the directions on the bag you have. You can also use short grain brown rice, but it will be a little trickier as it doesn’t stick together as well.

Once the rice is cooked gently toss it with 1 tablespoon seasoned rice vinegar per cup of uncooked rice.

Put the vegetables, soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger in little bowls on the table. In front of each place-setting put a bamboo mat and a bowl of warm water. Have a roll of wax paper or plastic wrap ready. And let the fun begin!

Gather everyone at the table. Cover a bamboo rolling mat with wax paper or plastic wrap. Lay 1 sheet of nori, shiny side down, on each mat. Now everyone can wet their fingers with water (to prevent the rice from sticking) and gently spread about 2/3 cup of the rice evenly all over the nori, except leaving an inch of the far end of nori bare.

Place a thin row of vegetables across the middle of the rice patch. Sprinkle the rice with sesame seeds. If you like wasabi put a little smear of it along the middle as well.

Grab the edge of the mat closest to you, keeping the fillings in place with your fingers, and roll it into a tight roll, using the mat to shape the cylinder. Pull away the mat. Cut each roll with a serrated knife 6 pieces.

Dip into the soy sauce, add a little wasabi pop it in your mouth! Share some of your bites with someone else, and start a new one!