After a wonderful evening with our good friends Ron and Julie Seballos learning to wrap sushi, we have taken to making sushi at home about 2 to 3 times a month. We only do cooked food because two of our children enjoy eating it as well. When we make homemade sushi for other adults, we will get smoked salmon or even tuna for spicy tuna. When our kids are older they will make the choice of eating any raw food. If you are new to sushi, you should know that California rolls use either cooked crab or imitation crab meat, as you will see below.
Cut Corners: When we made the sushi, we didn't have the right type of rice. There is better rice to use, but we have found that we like to use plain old jasmine rice. The avocado could have been a little riper.
We start off making rice in our Black & Decker Rice Maker. I do about 6 cups, because I give some to my son to eat before we add the Sushi Vinegar.
Again, we use plain old Jasmine Rice as purchased from Tink Holl at East 36th and Payne in Cleveland, Ohio. We go through about a bag a month between Sushi and Stir-Fry.
We take the rice right out of the cooker and stir it every minute or so to help it cool.
After the rice cools, we use our special sushi vinegar. The smaller bottle has a great smell, less vinegary than the other. We use the smaller bottle for the initial rice hit, and dip our fingers with the stuff from the larger bottle.
We start off by adding 2 tablespoons of the rice vinegar to the 6 cups of rice. This is not an exact science. After adding the 2 tablespoons we gradually drizzle more vinegar into the rice. We mash it as we go. So there is kind of a stir and then mash and then stir. When the rice is mashing well and has a slight vinegar smell to it, it is ready.
To make our California rolls, we use a cucumber, an avocado and imitation crab meat.
She prepares the cucumber by peeling it. We then cut off the ends and slice the cucumber into long pieces.
Her brother sneaks into the picture. You can see how we cut the cucumber and the avocado. We also have some scallions/green onions for plain veggie rolls.
We use Nori from Tink Holl. This is the part where people freak out about eating seaweed. Nori is dried seaweed. This is not the seaweed like you find in lakes or ponds. This is dried kelp. If you want to eat sushi and have gotten past the raw food you will have to get past the seaweed as well. There are a lot worse things to eat than seaweed.
We also made a spicy mayo for the first time. Basically we have some really good Omega-3 mayonaise and the perfect hot chili sauce and mix them together to make a spicy mayo sauce. I saw this done at a local sushi bar for the spicy tuna.
We use nice bamboo rollers. Wrapping them with Saran wrap keeps them good and clean. These are from a sushi set that we picked up at a garage sale for 5 bucks. Did I mention the rice maker was new from a garage sale for 5 bucks? We do sushi on the cheap!
We use a banana split dish to dip our fingers in when we handle the rice. This keeps the rice from sticking to our fingers when we are mashing it for the roll.
Wasabi! This is a one ounce wasabi paste. The wasabi is made by adding water. This one ounce little jar from a 'gourmet' outlet store was $3.99.
This huge 34 ounce bag from Tink Holl was just $7.99! According to the cost of the 1 ounce, the 34 ounce bag should be 156 dollars! What a bargain, because the big bag is much better than the little one ounce deal. We use the little one ounce to store stuff from the big bag.
Here are the sushi accoutrements! The wasabi paste is covered with Saran wrap to trap in the flavor. The big soy sauce bottle is a sweet soy sauce that I think is much better than regular soy sauce. It drizzles well for presentation. The pickled ginger is a nice palate cleanser. See the spicy mayo in the background? Also, sour cream is good for a veggie sushi roll.
The nori is placed on the bamboo roll.
We add the crab meat. Note the vinegar on her fingers.
Next, the cucumber is placed next to the crab.
Finally, the avocado is placed along side the cucumber. Rolling is all technique. The fingers are placed on the contents while the thumb starts the roll. The part closest to you is kind of 'flipped and tucked' over and then rolled and squeezed.
Suffice it to say that an 8 year old can learn the technique with just a little bit of practice! We then cut the roll in half, and half again on both halves, and half again on both halves of both halves. This makes the pieces even!
And here she is with her creation! Homemade sushi by an 8-year-old. And she ate it all up!
After making some different rolls, we had a feast!
Thank you much for viewing our pictures and watching us make sushi at home. If you have any questions about making sushi at home, I would love to hear from you.