Making Sushi

Last night was the first time I made my own sushi rolls with the help of two friends and here's the procedure we used, as complete amateurs, to make our sushi rolls:

Get the proper tools.  Outside of the sushi-roll mat thing, its all just want you to put on your sushi.  We have the wrap stuff, sticky rice, carrots, asparagus, avocado, cilantro, cream cheese, spicy tuna (which was just mince tuna, add a bunch of siracha, and then mix it all up), tuna, salmon, shrimp, and sake.  Sake wasn't put directly in anything but our glasses and bellies.

Place the seaweed wrap on the mat.  Mostly just a picture to beg for advertisement money from that wrap company! GIMME MONEY...or free wrap.

Then comes the sticky rice.  Get a bowl for water so you can wet your fingers (the sticky rice will, believe it or not, stick to your fingers).  The idea is to get a consistent thickness rice.

I put way too much rice on.  You're supposed to leave enough free seaweed that you can have it cling and close the roll.  I left only that.  How much rice you use is specific to how much is going in your roll, and we all made huge rolls...and yet still this was way too much.  I was told you normally only cover like 1/2-2/3 of the sheet.

Then you get to load your roll up.  You put it all on the bottom, or one person did middle, so it rolls nice and neat.  I made two of these bad boys.  This one consists of salmon, cilantro, cream cheese, and avocado.  My other consisted of Avocado, Cream Cheese, Spicy Tuna, and Shrimp.

Roll that bad boy up!  The mat is there to help get it tight, especially the first roll (as in procedure, not as in first sushi roll) or two, or else it will be kind of messy.  I rolled mine with my hands, and it was close, but the edge pieces were definitely...crumbly.

Mine's the one on the right.  You see what I mean by crumbly?  Still delicious, but crumbly.

After rolling them, you cut them as you please.    It should be a nice quick saw motion with a non-serrated blade.  If it feels hard to cut at all, just rinse the knife.

Oh yeah, high ball glasses filled with soy sauce are classy.

This is my avocado, cream cheese, shrimp, and spicy tuna.  As you can see, its a much tighter roll and easier to handle.  Part of that is I used a LOT less rice, and the other part is I tried harder.

So the last stop is the best step...ENJOY!

I only have one or two consistent readers...but we should totally do this.  It tasted like top notch sushi (if its not from a place that does deep-fry or specialty sauces), but also gives quite a fun experience.