Roll Your Own

Tonight I undertook a brave culinary experiment. I made my own Sushi. The fine raw seafood dish that I had once only enjoyed in the confines of a Japanese restaurant under the skilled hands of a sushi chef was enjoyed in the comfort of my own home, for a fraction of the cost. This was my first time trying to make this dish and I encountered only a couple of snags along the way. Overall, it turned out excellent and my only regret is that we made too much! If your interested in making your own … keep reading.

First things first. You need fish. Fresh fish. Not the packaged stuff from the grocery store! Go to your local fish market and pick up the good stuff. If you’re smart, talk to a local sushi place and see where they get their seafood. Most of the time they all get it from the same place. If you’re in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, check out Coastal Seafoods. The one in Saint Paul is on Grand and Snelling and the one in Minneapolis is near the Tripple Rock somewhere.

I asked the guy at the fish place how much fish I needed to feed three people. Somewhere around 3/4 to 1 lb of fish he said. Ok, I trusted him. I got a half pound of Yellowtail and a half pound of Ahi Tuna. The fish came to around $20.00 or so. Luckily, the fish place also had all the extra stuff we needed to make the Sushi. Here’s what you need:

• Bamboo rolling mat
• Wasabi (powder or pre made)
• Fresh Pickled Ginger slices
• Rice Vinegar
• Soy Sauce
• Naro (seaweed sheets)
• Short-grain Rice
• (Optional) Chop-sticks
• (Optional) Miso Soup mix
• (Optional) Hot Tea
• (Optional) Bottle of Sake!

So everything together came to about $40.00 (minus the Sake).

Making the rice is supposed to be the trickiest part, but if you follow the instructions on the box like we did you shouldn’t have any problems. Use equal parts rice and water. You should wash the rice in cold water before you cook it until the water runs clear. The key is to get the rice real sticky. The basic instructions to cook our rice were: In a covered pot boil for two minutes. Simmer for 10 minutes at medium heat. Let stand for another 10 minutes (still covered, don’t let the steam escape!). After the time is up, add about 1 TBSP of rice vinegar per 1 cup of rice. Stir it up good and let that cool and sit for a little longer so it gets nice and sticky.

So here’s the fun part. Get out your bamboo rolling mat, place a sheet of Naro across it making sure to line up the edges of the seaweed with the edges of the mat. Place a layer of rice covering about 1/3 of the entire sheet and make it just thick enough so you can’t see the seaweed underneath it. Cut up your fish into thin strips and place them in the center of your rice layer. It really helps to use a sharp knife. It makes the fish cuts much prettier and not so ghetto and ragged like ours looked. Next, start rolling up the mat around the Sushi and get it into a long burrito looking thing. To get it to stick together just use a little bit of water and let it sit for a minute. If you’ve ever rolled your own cigarettes you should catch on pretty easily.

Now that you have your long Sushi burrito thing, just chop it up into slices about 1 inch thick. This will yeild about 10 pieces of delicious sushi. You can get crazy with it if you want, add vegetables and cream cheese. Salmon Roe is good. Just about anything is game I suppose. The 1 lb. of fish that we got yeilded about 80 pieces of sushi, an insane amount. We got about 60 pieces in before the three of us were completely full.

Overall it was excellent. We all got stuffed on Sushi and it probably would of cost us over $120.00 at any Sushi place. It was suprisingly easy too! This wasn’t exactly a comprehensive tutorial but if you’re really interested in making your own just google it.