DIY sushi

Valentine's Day 2009. D and I decided to stay in, cook our own dinner, and save some dinero. We agreed on homemade sushi, a first for both of us. D went to the local Japanese market and picked up some maguro, salmon, eel, and lovely delicious fatty smooth toro.


Did either of us know how to make sushi? No. But how hard could it be? We had both observed sushi chefs making sushi plenty of times to know how it should be done. It can't be THAT hard, right?

Wrong!

Rolling makis is possibly one of the more frustrating tasks in the kitchen, and is not as easy as the sushi chefs make it look. D's rolls were too loose and ended up looking like half-moons. He added too much rice and didn't roll them tight enough. I, on the other hand, rolled my rolls way too tight and all the fillings came squishing out the ends. We even used the bamboo mat to roll the maki. We had good sharp knives, but there must be a special technique to slicing maki rolls because ours just got smooshed under the knife blade. As for fillings, we made some spicy tuna (chopped tuna, mayo, Sriracha chili sauce, scallions, panko bread crumbs), and used various combos of salmon, avocado, cucumber, fish egg, sesame seeds.


The nigiri wasn't too difficult to make, but the rice kept falling apart when we picked them up with chopsticks. For the nigiri, we used primarily salmon, and toro (fatty tuna).


Then, D tried making some hand rolls. Those of you familiar with sushi will know that hand rolls are supposed to be cone-shaped. As you can see, D's ended up being cylindrical with the ends pinched off. Very creative.


All in all, the sushi looked amateur, tasted OK, and we probably spent more money than we would have spent at a sushi restaurant! Not to mention the amount of time and frustration we had making the sushi. But, it was a worthwhile bonding experience nonetheless.

If you want to make sushi at home, check out Passionate Eater's posting on DIY sushi... which I wish I read before this sushi-making adventure!

Next time, we'll go OUT for sushi.