Making Sushi Yourself For Beginners: This Is How The Great Rolls Succeed

A treat on every roll – and freshly made with your favorite ingredients: it’s worth making your own sushi! And it’s easier than you might think. With our little instructions for beginners, you can also make the rolls without professional tools such as bamboo mats.

Simple instructions: make sushi yourself

You love sushi more than anything and would like to make it yourself – but you don’t have the typical tools and ingredients at home? You can do without! Home remedies are sufficient for a first attempt. If you keep at it and prepare the great rolls more often, you can still get the sushi utensils. To make sushi yourself without a mat, you can simply use a kitchen towel, aluminum foil, or even a placemat. With a little dexterity, you can also roll it without any tools – just try it out. In any case, it is important that the rice has the right consistency and is nice and sticky. Our sushi recipe reveals how it works. For the other ingredients, depending on the type of sushi, nori sheets are on the list. They are available in Asian markets and in well-stocked supermarkets with delicatessen departments. You can also make sushi yourself without seaweed.

Maki, Nigiri & Co.: Make-your-own rolls

Due to the large number of different sushi recipes, you are flexible when it comes to choosing the ingredients. It doesn’t always have to be salmon, avocado, cucumber, ginger, wasabi, and soy sauce: feel free to get creative and use what the fridge and pantry have to offer. Instead of sushi rice, you can also use rice pudding – such as the Arborio, Carnaroli, or Vialone varieties. The main thing is that it is short-grain rice. Rice vinegar can be replaced with light balsamic vinegar. To start, you can make your own sushi without nori sheets by simply preparing nigiri. These are elongated, hand-formed rice rolls that are topped with fish, beef, mushrooms, or pieces of omelette. With maki sushi, the algae do not form the shell, but are incorporated into the filling. So the rice is on the outside. To make this sushi yourself without nori sheets, simply omit the ingredient completely. If you want it to be very simple, you can save yourself the hassle of rolling. Finally, Japanese cuisine knows sushi and sashimi: the latter is raw fish that you can slice thinly and simply enjoy with rice, soy sauce, and other ingredients such as roasted sesame seeds and vegetables. We recommend our recipe for salmon sashimi to try.

The 8 basic steps to making sushi

You see, making sushi is not magic. From nigiri to California rolls, you can make your own sushi without having the perfect equipment. The following brief instructions show you the main steps, details can be found in the respective recipes:

1. Wash rice, drain for an hour
2. Cut the fish fillet, marinate and fry
3. Cook rice
4. Prepare vinegar
5. Mix rice and vinegar
6. Prepare nori sheets
7. Mix wasabi paste, prepare vegetables
8. Roll and cut sushi

All in all, you should plan about 90 minutes to make sushi yourself. However, simple variants can also be done much faster.