Mealightenment: Homemade Sushi, 3-Ways

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were grocery shopping. While walking down the International Foods isle, I found a package of seaweed wraps, and thought, "How cool would it be if we made our own sushi?"
Three weeks later, I find myself eating my words while scraping up content for the blog. To be honest, this wasn't a terrible endeavor, it's just that I had absolutely no recipes or research that I was going off of; I just winged it and tried to have fun with the recipes I came up with. I also wanted to give myself some options with the types of rolls that my wife and I had to eat, so I decided to make Sushi 3-ways. The first style was a steak roll with rice, avocado and chives and seaweed wraps; the second was seared ahi tuna with rice, cucumber, green onion, seaweed wrap and a bit a Sriracha; the third was just a basic rice ball with shrimp in the middle, batter dipped and fried. This meal goes a bit over budget if cooking all three styles of sushi, but if you choose one to serve up with noodles, you'll land around $15 for your total budget.

Remember, just think of what you've tried yourself in the wide world of sushi, and copycat it (it's what I did). This is what you'll need (choose wisely):

Ahi Tuna Cutlet, Steak Cutlet, or Shrimp
2 Cups Instant Rice
2 Seaweed Wraps (sheet form)
1 Mini Cucumber (optional)
3 Green Onions (optional)
1 Avocado (optional)
Liquid Batter Mixture (optional)
Sweet Peppers (optional)

After choosing which roll you've decided to make, you'll first want to make your sticky white rice. Pour two cups of rice into your pot and add about 1 cup of water. Let the rice simmer to a boil, cover 5 minutes, uncover, remove from heat, and fluff with fork. Leave rice for a while to cool, giving itself an opportunity to get sticky.

After completing your rice, you'll need to start to cook your meat. For my wife and I, we do like many types of raw sushi or even sashimi, but she prefers her meat products cooked well done. Whatever your choice, you can slice up your raw fish or shrimp, but just remember that if choosing beef to cook to your liking. Once you've decided how you want your meat, cooked or not, you should then begin to prep the veggies of your choice, and place them in small bowls off to the side.

Seared Tuna (left), Beef (center), and Shrimp (right)

From this point on, it is purely free-form. My technique was to roll up balls of rice, place meat and veggies, and then wrap them in seaweed. After trying this method and giving up shortly after rolling about 10 rolls, I decided that wrapping rice and meat up in the seaweed and THEN slicing it up would have likely been my best bet. Either way, a failure or not, I was able to get away with making some pretty delicious rolls. These turned out to be so much better than I had anticipated, that I wish I had decided to make much more.

Lastly, I tried to create something a bit different from the sushi I had "attempted" earlier. I took the remainder of the rice and rolled it into balls, stuffed shrimp into those rice balls, then dipped them in the Cajun batter and deep fried them. They tasted a bit like hush puppies except with rice filling rather than corn meal or flour. No need to season the rice because the seasoning of the batter made the fritters pretty good (Sriracha or soy sauce were good dipping sauces, too), but you could season it if you saw fit.

After making sushi, I can say that before I try again I will do my research and figure out the best method for preparation. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to make something that typically only trained chefs are capable of making, and it definitely makes me respect their craft that much more. In retrospect, if this recipe doesn't inspire you to try and make your own sushi rolls, here are a few sushi restaurants (below) around town where rather than making your own you can let the pros do it for you.

Eat On, and remember to be adventurous with your home cooking.

--JG