Guest Blog: Homemade Sushi

For today's Friday guest blogger, my brother Robbie has volunteered to share his DIY sushi making experience. I arrived home last weekend to find him and his girlfriend hovered over the kitchen counter, which was completely covered in rice, a sushi rolling mat, plates of cut veggies, a huge pot of rice, and bottles of soy sauce, ginger, etc. They were just finishing up so I was right in time to eat the finished product, and it was excellent! Thanks, Rob!  ~Kris

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For Christmas I received a homemade sushi making kit, packed with a rolling mat, rice, and ginger among other things. Being an avid fan of sushi I was excited about making my own sushi, but I've been pretty busy so it took a while to get around to it.

So finally last Saturday I decided it was time to try it out! I made a run to Kroger to get some carrots, asparagus, avocado, and some Hot and Spicy Thai Mayonnaise. Then I headed to Fresh Market for some sushi grade tuna - fresh, never frozen. And the sushi making began; the next three hours were interesting and somewhat complicated.

The first thing needed was to make the rice. This was by far the most time consuming and complicated part of this endeavor. Please note: You have to make sure you buy short grain rice when making sushi because it will become stickier than long grain rice when cooked and make the rolls stick together. Thankfully this came in the kit or I would have just bought regular rice! This rice took about 2 hours to prepare.

It had to be heated for 45 minutes over medium-high heat and covered and uncovered like a million times! I was tired of getting off the couch to do another step in making the rice. I recommend a rice maker to uncomplicate this process.

After making the rice, we cut the vegetables and tuna up into "sushi cuts" (long, thin strips – yes there is a joke to be made there). The rolling process was a lot more simple than I expected it to be, but it is a bit too complicated to bore you with here, just know it IS NOT too hard for you to try at home, just get a how-to book or look here.

We decided to make both Spicy Tuna and Vegetable rolls, the vegetable rolls were in case the tuna didn’t turn out to our liking, but both turned out to be quite delicious.
The tuna was great because you could add as much or as little spicy mayonnaise to the inside of the roll to control the level of heat. We also tinkered with different combinations, looking for the right consistency and crunch. Our favorite combo was the tuna, spicy mayonnaise, cucumber, and avocado roll.

The vegetable roll was a standard carrot, avocado, and cucumber roll. We made inside-out rolls, which has the rice on the inside of the roll instead of the outside, which means the seaweed is on the outside.

The final verdict on home-made sushi was a good one! I would make a couple of adjustments to how I prepared the sushi, starting with a rice maker to uncomplicated the rice, but for the most part this was a huge success. Also, continuing to try new types of seafood and combinations is something I am intrigued with.

Do not be afraid to try making your own sushi if you are an avid sushi fan like me!

P.S. – Be Careful not to cook too much rice...it expands when cooking and will make way more than you think!!

~Rob