Making Sushi and Rolls at Home!

Making sushi and rolls at home is an excellent group activity and makes consuming this usual expensive cuisine a little more affordable. The key things you need are fresh sashimi grade fish, Imitation Crab meat, Seaweed sheets, Avocado, Sesame seeds, Cucumber, Japanese rice, Carrots, Japanese mayo, Siracha, Rice Vinegar, Wasabi, Sushi roll mat, and plastic wrap.

How do your sushi and rolls look like? Give it a try!

Fresh New Zealand Salmon

Hamachi (Yellowtail) from Japan

Fatty Toro portion of Hamachi

Marinating the Hamachi removes the fishy smell and enhances the taste

Big Eye Tuna from Hawaii

Rainbow Roll

Sashimi Platter

Sushi

Homemade Sushi Rolls

It's a sushi roll kind of night.  I spent at least 45 minutes browsing through Yelp trying to find a good sushi place with fairly priced sushi rolls.  Unfortunately I came across either really good places with insanely high prices, or very mediocre places with affordable sushi.  The only solution to this dilemma, was of course, to make my own sushi rolls.

I am by no means an expert at rolling sushi, but I certainly had some of the basic components necessary to construct a roll.  Rice cooker, check. Bamboo mat, check. Sharp knife, check.  So now all I needed to do was to stock up on some great seafood!  I went to a local Zion (Korean supermarket) and picked up some BBQ Unagi (Eel), sashimi-grade Salmon, Masago (Fish roe), Uni (Sea urchin), Imitation crab, an avocado, and a zucchini (I meant to get a cucumber but stupidly picked the wrong vegetable...what? they were right next to each other!).

Step 1: Line the Bamboo mat with clear plastic wrap
Step 2: Make a thin layer of rice (seasoned with sweetened rice vinegar) in the shape of a rectangle
Step 3: Place a layer of Nori (seaweed) over the square of rice (slightly smaller than the size of the rice rectangle)
Step 4: Line the stuffing/ingredients along the center
Step 5: Roll gently and incrementally, squeezing the roll lightly as you go along
Step 6: Lay some thinly sliced sashimi and/or avocado over the top of the roll. Give the entire roll a nice squeeze again with the Bamboo mat.
Step 7: Cut your roll (wet and wipe your knife each time to avoid squishing your roll or having the roll stick to your knife)

You can probably find good step-by-step videos on YouTube.

I'll just provide pictures of the final products :)

Roll 1: (Inside) Avocado, zucchini, imitation crab with japanese mayo and sriracha. (Outside) salmon and avocado. Top with Masago (Fish roe).
Roll 2: (Inside) Unagi, imitation crab with Japanese mayo and Sriracha, avocado, and zucchini. (Outside) Unagi and avocado. Top with masago.

TA-DA~!

Grocery List

Sea Urchin and Masago (Fish roe)

Flavoring Agents

Rainbow Roll

Making of Dragon Roll

Dragon Roll

Finished Product!