How Can You Make Sushi Yourself?

You can easily make your own sushi using a bamboo mat and the ingredients are fish, vegetables, wasabi paste, seaweed, and sushi rice. Suitable fish include salmon, octopus, crab, shrimp, and tuna. Avocados, cucumbers, or carrots are often used as vegetables for sushi. When buying the fish, make sure that it is also suitable as sushi fish. It must bear the “Sushi Quality” seal of quality. It ensures that the fish can be eaten raw without any health risk. Not every variety is suitable for rice either. Special Nishiki rice is sticky, making it easy to process into sushi.

Sushi is a Japanese dish based on sour rice. This is topped with a choice of vegetables, raw or smoked fish, raw seafood, tofu, or egg. There are two different types of sushi: maki sushi and nigri sushi. While maki sushi involves rolling up a stuffed seaweed leaf, nigri sushi involves forming small rolls out of small rice balls. These rice rolls are topped with raw fish, omelets, or raw seafood and entwined with strips of seaweed.

If you want to make maki sushi yourself, it is best to proceed step by step:

Step 1: Wash the rice, steam, or boil it and marinate with salt, sugar, and vinegar and leave to cool.

Step 2: Roll out the seaweed leaves and cut in half.

Step 3: Place the smooth side of the seaweed on the bamboo mat and place the cooked sushi rice on top.

Step 4: Spread the rice on the seaweed leaf with slightly moistened hands. Cut out about an inch or two on the sides.

Step 5: Use a spoon to make a furrow in the middle of the evenly distributed rice.

Step 6: Put a bit of wasabi paste in the furrow.

Step 7: Place a slice of fish or fish slices and two strips of vegetables on the wasabi.

Step 8: Roll the stuffed seaweed leaf into a roll using the bamboo mat.

Step 9: Then cut the sushi roll into six or seven equally sized, bite-sized pieces with a moistened, sharp knife.

To prepare sushi, you should not only know the recipe, you should also be familiar with the Japanese names of the ingredients.

• Nori = toasted sheet of seaweed
• Sake = Japanese for salmon (Sake is also the name for Japanese rice wine)
• Ninjin = chopped carrot
• Kappa = cucumber
• Tamago = omelet
• Tekka = tuna
• Wasabi = hot green horseradish paste
• Sushi-zu = spice mixture for dressing sushi rice