Homemade Sushi Adventure
I’m no Jiro, but I do love sushi.
Formative years in Massachusetts cemented an appreciation for high quality sushi made with care and attention to detail. Over time, I’ve even gained dexterity with chopsticks and confidence about choosing pieces. So why not make some at home?
Decades ago, a couple friends invited me to an impromptu sushi-making party at their apartment in Boston and demonstrated how to make rolls using a bamboo mat. Each bite tasted better than if we’d bought them.
In the years since, the possibility of making rolls by myself hadn’t occurred to me until a shrimp roll craving led to the Minimalist Baker’s recipe for sushi-making without a bamboo mat, which was good because we don’t have one.
In the process, I discovered that it’s possible to “wing” sushi rolls with a few essential ingredients. Sushi rice and toasted nori sheets specifically made for sushi helped. Although the sushi-grade fish at the fancy grocery store were tempting, I bought shrimp to cook instead.
The shrimp went into a zip-top plastic storage bag with a little salt, puréed ginger, and a couple smashed cloves of garlic. Then I used a sous vide machine (yay!) to poach it, removed the shells and tails, and gently straightened the shrimp to add to the rolls.
But it would have been easy to marinate the shrimp and poach them in water. Or batter and pan-fry them. Or skip the seafood and focus on veggies. Lots of options. Just watch the texture — adding carrot slivers gives the pieces a nice crunch.
For some reason, my Greek ancestry perhaps, I thought that several sushi rolls wouldn’t be enough for the two of us to eat for dinner so I also made these delicious shrimp cakes, following a commenter’s suggestion to use a full cup of panko. We were uncomfortably full. The meal reminded me of the time my friend Erika and I went to an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Manhattan that charged extra fees for anything you ordered but couldn’t finish.
Recently out here in Colorado the temperature soared, and sushi sounded like just the thing. We’d recovered from that over-the-top meal. This time it was all about the rolls.
Homemade Sushi
3 or 4 sheets of toasted nori, specified as being for sushi
1 C. sushi rice
3 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar
2 Tbsp. sugar
½ tsp. salt
Half a fresh, ripe avocado
10 raw shrimp, cleaned but with tails on
2 cloves garlic
½ tsp. puréed ginger
1 small carrot OR several baby carrots
¼ C. sriracha mayonnaise
Lemon wedges
Soy sauce
Special equipment: Sharp kitchen knife, tea or kitchen towel, plastic wrap, gallon zip-top bag, and sous vide machine or kitchen thermometer.
Sous vide shrimp: Sprinkle a little salt over the raw shrimp. Add them to the gallon zip-top bag. Peel the garlic cloves and remove the green germ if garlic isn’t super fresh. Smash garlic with the flat side of a large kitchen knife blade. Add the garlic to the bag. Finally, add the puréed ginger to the bag. Gently press the outside of the bag to move the ingredients around so the shrimp get fairly evenly covered in the ginger.
Press the air out of the bag using the water displacement method. Leaving the bag in the water with the sous vide machine, set it to 128.5°F. (I chose this temperature after some experimentation because really snappy shrimp are hard to bend into a straighter line inside the sushi roll.) Remove the bag once it reaches temperature and allow it to cool a little.
Non-sous vide shrimp: Alternatively, you can follow the Serious Eats poached shrimp method but take them out at a lower temperature so they remain flexible. Combine the shrimp with a little salt, the smashed garlic, and puréed ginger in a bowl and let it marinate for at least 15 minutes. Prepare an ice bath for the shrimp.
Set the marinated shrimp in a medium pan with cold water on the stovetop. Heat over medium, stirring occasionally, until the temperature reaches about 130°F. You can go higher if you want a snappy shrimp, I just didn’t want that texture for the sushi rolls. Drain shrimp and place them in the ice bath. Remove them to a plate lined with a paper towel.
Sushi rice: Rinse and prepare the rice according to the directions. At altitude, I add an extra 2 tablespoons of water.
While the rice is cooking, add the sugar, salt, and vinegar to a small saucepan. Heat it over medium, stirring occasionally until the sugar and salt dissolve completely. Pour into a small jar or glass and refrigerate until needed.
Once the rice is ready — and I did this step after it had rested for 10 minutes — add the rice to a medium mixing bowl along with the cooled vinegar mixture. Stir with a rubber spatula or wooden rice spoon. Even though the rice starts out seeming fairly wet, it should dry and turn sticky.
Fillings: While the rice is cooling, remove any shells and tails from the cooled shrimp and prep your vegetables. Cut the carrots into very thin sticks. Mix together the sriracha and mayo in a small bowl. After you cut some lemon wedges for serving, squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the avocado slices to prevent them from browning.
Pressing the sushi rice on the nori with wet hands. Credit: Guillaume Lessard.
A line of fillings positioned slightly closer to the bottom edge. Credit: Guillaume Lessard.
Rolling the sushi: Place a tea towel or kitchen towel on the counter (or use a bamboo mat if you have one — although if you have a bamboo mat, you probably don’t need any of these instructions!). Place a piece of plastic wrap over the towel. You might need to overlap two pieces so they’re wide enough.
Place a piece of nori on the plastic wrap, shiny side down. Put about a quarter of the sushi rice on the nori. Wet your hands with cold water and pat the rice into a thin layer over the nori.
Arrange a line of filling in a neat row running horizontally across the nori about a quarter of the way up from the edge nearest to you. A little of the filling goes a long way. Spoon a thin line of sriracha mayo across the filling.
Start rolling the nori and rice from the nearest edge. When the filling is covered, use the plastic wrap and the towel to compress the roll as you go. Keep rolling and pressing until it’s a complete roll, seam-side down. If your rice was still slightly warm, place the whole roll in the refrigerator for 2 minutes.
Set the first roll aside and continue with the next one. You might have some sushi rice leftover, or odd amounts of fillings. That’s normal. It’s a learning process.
Slice the sushi roll into discs with a sharp knife. I started with a cut in the middle of the roll and then went out from there. Wash and drying the knife repeatedly produced cleaner cuts. Make the ends wider slices so you can put them on the plate with the fillings sticking out. Otherwise things get a bit dicey.
Serve the rolls on large plates or a platter with the lemon wedges and soy sauce for dipping.
