LaPiS September 28 : Rice : How-To Make Sushi

Rice is this Sunday’s theme for LaPiS. I’ve decided to make sushi for this theme. I’ve been eating sushi at Japanese restaurants and buying sushi platters from the Commissary lately that I haven’t made them in a while. Albeit a tedious task, I quite enjoy making my own sushi. I discovered today, it’s even more tedious if you’re trying to take step-by-step how-to-make sushi pictures to share with friends online .

But I persevered without leaving any sticky grain of rice in my Nikon D40. Hope you learn from it and get you excited in making your own homemade sushi.

INGREDIENTS :

• Sushi rice(Japanese sticky rice)
• 2 tbsp of rice vinegar
• salt and pepper
• 1 tsp of sugar
• sprinkle of powdered ginger (optional)
• Crab flakes (substitute with crab sticks if you prefer)
• cucumbers, sliced lengthwise
• omelet (2 eggs)
• seaweed sushi wraps
• water for sealing
• wasabi mayonnaise & soy sauce

You can pretty much buy all these ingredients at local oriental store or at the International section of any grocery store. You can find the sticky rice at Wal-Mart Supercenter just in case you don’t have an oriental store nearby.

It’s important that you use sticky rice instead of the long grain rice. I always have 2 kinds of rice in my pantry. Long grain for fried rice or just regular side item and the sticky rice for sushi. Although my husband prefers sticky rice over long grain so the latter  has been designated for fried rice only lately.

Having a rice cooker also helps. Any Asian family has a rice cooker in their counter. I bet you $100 if you open it, there’s a cooked rice inside it under warm mode..hehe. That’s what’s best about having a rice cooker. You can cook rice today and not worry about spoiling or drying the leftovers. The rice cooker has an automatic “warm” mode which keeps the rice warm and fresh. I just recently replaced my AROMA rice cooker with this new GE rice cooker. The GE one is bigger and it matches my Magic Bullet Pro .

Now, onto the step-by-step how to’s :

Put some cooked rice on a bowl, add the rice vinegar, salt, pepper, powdered ginger. Mix everything together. Leave it in the counter to cool down. You don’t want to start making sushi with hot rice. .

Once the rice has cooled down a bit, start assembling your other ingredients and tools. Rice, crab flakes, seaweed wraps, cucumber, omelet, and a cup of water.

Spread the rice on the seaweed. Look closely at the picture. There’s a a part of the seaweed with no rice. You need to do that to fold it nice and tight in the end.

Layer the crabs, omelet, and cucumber. You can substitute crab flakes with crab stick. I prefer the flakes kind. The crab stick are sometimes too rubbery and watery. You can also substitute cucumber with either ripe avocado or ripe mango.

Roll the sushi nice and tight. Use your finger to gently apply water on that part of the seaweed with no rice. The water will seal the roll together.

Repeat the steps to roll as much sushi as you can.

Now here’s a really good tip. Wrap your plate of sushi rolls with saran/plastic wrap. Put it in the fridge for about an hour and a half. Don’t worry, it won’t dry the rice. It would though if you keep it longer than 2 hours. A little bit of cooling time makes your homemade sushi rolls taste like the one you;ll get from sushi bar or Japanese restaurants. Trust me .

I love my wasabi mayonnaise. Find it at oriental stores. If you can’t find them at the shelves, check out the refrigerators. Whuut? Small Oriental stores usually have at least 2 fridges in the store. That’s where you’ll find egg roll wrappers, frozen longanisa (sausages), frozen tocino, Asian flavored ice creams like ube/purple ice cream.

There you go, hope you learned something. Like I said, it could be tedious but once you’ve mastered how to make your own sushi, it’s quite gratifying. Surprise your friends by inviting them over for a sushi night. That would be an awesome and delish get together