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Sushi at Home Making sushi rice and simple rolls in your own kitchen: what to buy, what to skip, and how not to make anybody sick. Kenji and Laura Mori

Why this page exists. We are Kenji and Laura. Kenji grew up in Osaka and moved here for graduate school in 1988; Laura grew up outside Cleveland and had never eaten sushi until 1990, on their second date, when Kenji ordered for both of them and she ate the wasabi in one bite thinking it was avocado. They got married anyway. Every Friday since about 1993 has been sushi night at our house, and after enough friends asked "can you show us how?", here it is. A word up front: what we make at home is not what a trained sushi chef makes. A real itamae apprentices for years just to be allowed to make the rice. We are two people with a rice cooker and a bamboo mat. But home sushi is good, it is cheap, it is fun with kids, and the rice, which is the part that matters, is something you can absolutely learn. So let's start there. [ Shopping List | The Rice | Nori | Rolling Maki | Fillings | Food Safety | Friday Night ]

What to Buy (and What to Skip)

Most of this is at an Asian grocery, and these days a lot of it is in the "international" aisle of a regular supermarket. You need less than you think. BUY: Short-grain rice, sometimes labeled "sushi rice" or "Japanese-style rice." Medium-grain California rice works fine too. Not long-grain, not jasmine, not basmati, not instant, not "converted." Those won't stick and you will be sad. Rice vinegar. Plain, unseasoned. (There is also "seasoned" rice vinegar with sugar and salt already in it; it works in a pinch but you lose control of the seasoning.) Nori - the dried seaweed sheets, sold in packs of ten. Look for ones that are dark, almost black, and shiny. Greenish or dull ones are old. A bamboo rolling mat (makisu). Two or three dollars. Get two if you have kids. Sugar and salt. You have these. Soy sauce, and if you like it, wasabi in a tube or the powder you mix with water, and pickled ginger (gari) in a jar. Fillings; see below. SKIP: The "sushi kit" in the fancy box for $25. It's a mat, some nori and a paddle. Buy them separately for $6. A wooden rice tub (hangiri). Beautiful, traditional, and a wide glass or plastic bowl does the same job at home. Just don't use metal; the vinegar reacts with it. Sushi vinegar "concentrate," powdered sushi mix, and anything that says "just add water." Raw fish from the regular supermarket case. More on this under Food Safety. Please read it.

Sushi Rice (Shari) - The Part That Matters

"Sushi" means the seasoned rice. The fish is a topping. Get the rice right and everything else is decoration. This makes enough for about eight rolls, which feeds four people as a meal. Rice: 3 cups short-grain rice (measured with the rice cooker's cup, if you have one; it's smaller than a U.S. cup, and that's fine, just use the same cup for the water line) Water to the 3-cup line of the cooker, or about 3 1/4 cups in a pot Seasoning (sushi-zu): 1/3 cup rice vinegar 3 tablespoons sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1. Wash the rice. Put it in a bowl, cover with cold water, swirl it with your hand and pour off the cloudy water. Do this five or six times, until the water is nearly clear. This takes off the loose starch that would make the rice gummy. Don't skip it. Kenji's mother would know. 2. Let it sit. Drain the washed rice and let it sit in the cooker (or pot) with its measured water for 30 minutes before you turn it on. The grains soak up water and cook evenly. 3. Cook it. Rice cooker: push the button. Pot: bring to a boil with the lid on, turn to the lowest heat, cook 15 minutes, turn off, and leave the lid on for another 10. Do not stir, do not peek. 4. Make the seasoning while it cooks. Warm the vinegar, sugar and salt in a small pan just until the sugar dissolves. Don't boil it. Let it cool. 5. Season the rice. Turn the hot rice out into a wide bowl (not metal). Pour the seasoning over the rice paddle so it sprinkles across the whole surface. Now, with the paddle, cut through the rice sideways and fold it, gently. Don't stir or mash; you want every grain coated and separate. While you do this, fan the rice (a folded newspaper works, or a kid with a magazine, which is Laura's job on Friday nights) so it cools quickly. The fanning makes the rice glossy and stops it from getting mushy. 6. Cover with a damp towel and let it cool to about body temperature. That's the temperature sushi rice is meant to be eaten at: not hot, not cold. Use it within a few hours. Do not refrigerate sushi rice; it goes hard and dry. Make what you'll eat. Taste it. It should be a little sweet, a little tangy, a little salty, and it should hold together when you squeeze a bit in your fingers. Adjust the seasoning next time, not this time; you'll have a feel for it after two or three batches.

A Note on Nori

Nori has a shiny side and a rough side. The shiny side goes out (down on the mat), the rough side holds the rice. Most nori sold now is already toasted ("yaki nori"). If yours seems limp or tastes flat, you can toast it in ten seconds: hold a sheet with tongs and pass it a few inches above a gas burner on low, or over an electric burner, until it tightens up and turns a shade greener and smells nutty. Both sides, a few passes. Don't let it catch; it burns instantly. Keep the package sealed with the little dry packet in it. Nori that has picked up moisture from the air gets chewy and won't crisp. If it's gone soft, toast it as above and it usually comes back. For rolls, a full sheet makes a fat roll (futomaki); half a sheet, cut the long way, makes a thin roll (hosomaki), which is what we mostly make and what we recommend starting with.

Rolling Maki With the Mat

Set out: the mat, a bowl of water with a splash of vinegar in it (for your hands), the rice, the nori, fillings cut in pencil-thin strips, and a sharp knife with a damp towel next to it. 1. Lay the mat on the counter with the bamboo strips running left to right. Put a half sheet of nori on it, shiny side down, long edge toward you, lined up with the bottom edge of the mat. 2. Wet your hands (this keeps the rice from sticking to you instead of the nori). Take a handful of rice, about the size of a small lemon, and spread it over the nori in an even layer about as thick as your little finger, leaving a strip of bare nori about a half inch wide along the far edge. Don't press or pack the rice. Light hands. 3. Lay a line of filling across the rice, about a third of the way up from the edge nearest you. One or two things, not five. Overstuffing is the number one beginner mistake, and it makes the roll split. 4. Lift the near edge of the mat with your thumbs, holding the filling in place with your fingers, and roll the nori up and over the filling until the near edge of the rice meets the far edge of the rice. Squeeze gently along the mat to tighten. Then keep rolling until the bare strip of nori seals the roll. The moisture in the rice will make it stick; if not, wet the strip with a fingertip. 5. Give it a gentle squeeze in the mat, all along its length, to make it firm and even. Unroll the mat. Set the roll seam-side down. 6. Wipe the knife with the damp towel before every cut. Cut the roll in half, then each half in three, for six pieces. Saw gently; don't press down. Your first two rolls will be ugly. Ours were. Eat them anyway; they taste exactly the same. Inside-out rolls (rice on the outside, like a California roll) are the same idea with the nori flipped over after you spread the rice, and the mat wrapped in plastic wrap so the rice doesn't stick. Save that for your third Friday.

Fillings We Recommend for Home

The best home sushi fillings are the ones that don't need to be raw. They're cheap, they're safe, they're what a lot of Japanese families make at home too, and kids love them. Cucumber (kappa maki). Peel, seed, cut in matchsticks. The classic thin roll. Laura's favorite. Avocado. Ripe but not mushy. A tiny squeeze of lemon keeps it green. Cooked shrimp. Boiled, peeled, split lengthwise. Imitation crab (kanikama, the sticks). It's cooked fish paste, it's inexpensive, and it's what's in most California rolls anywhere. Canned tuna with a little mayonnaise. Very popular in Japan, especially in convenience-store onigiri. Don't knock it. Tamago - a sweetened egg omelet, cooked in a rectangle and cut in strips. We'll put the recipe up soon. Pickled radish (takuan), bright yellow, crunchy, sold in a vacuum pack. Smoked salmon. Store-bought, cured, from the deli case. Not raw. Cooked carrot, blanched asparagus, spinach squeezed dry. Good for vegetarians. Cream cheese with the smoked salmon or the cucumber. Not remotely traditional. Kenji's mother has never been told. The kids eat it by the roll. A sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds in the rice never hurts.

Food Safety: Please Read This Part We get more e-mail about this than anything else, so we'll be blunt. Raw fish is the one thing we do not recommend for beginners at home. Fish meant to be eaten raw has to be extremely fresh, handled cold from the boat to your cutting board, and (for most ocean fish) frozen hard first to kill parasites. "Sushi-grade" on a sign is not a legal term; it means whatever the store wants it to mean. The fillet in the regular supermarket case was not handled with raw eating in mind. If you want raw fish at home, get it from a source you trust: a Japanese grocery that sells fish specifically for sashimi, or a fishmonger who will look you in the eye and tell you it's meant to be eaten raw and that it has been frozen. Tell them what you're doing. Buy it the day you'll eat it, keep it on ice, and eat it that day. If anything about it smells like anything other than the ocean, don't. We do this maybe once a month, from one store we've used for years, and even then we stick to tuna and salmon. Everything else on this page, you can make with no raw fish at all and never miss it. Other rules of our kitchen: Wash your hands and the board between raw and cooked things. Keep cooked shrimp and crab sticks cold until you roll. Don't leave finished rolls on the counter all evening; they're for eating now, not for tomorrow's lunch (the rice suffers and so might you). Pregnant women, small children, older folks and anyone with a weak immune system should skip raw fish entirely; the cooked rolls are just as good.

Friday Sushi Night at the Moris'

Here's how it goes, if you want to try it. Rice goes on around 5:30. While it cooks, Kenji cuts fillings and Laura sets out little dishes of everything down the middle of the kitchen table, like a taco bar: cucumber, avocado, crab sticks, tuna-mayo, tamago, a bowl of sesame seeds. Four mats, four bowls of hand-water, a stack of half-sheets of nori. Then everybody makes their own. Our daughter (she's 9) makes rolls that are entirely avocado. Our son (12) makes rolls so big they won't close and eats them like a burrito. Kenji makes perfect ones and pretends not to notice the other ones. Laura takes the last of the rice and makes hand rolls (temaki, a cone of nori you fill and eat like an ice cream cone; no mat required, and honestly the easiest thing on this page). Miso soup from a packet. Green tea. The X-Files afterward, if it's on. It costs about eight dollars to feed the four of us. It takes an hour. It's the best hour of the week. Coming soon: tamago recipe, temaki (hand roll) how-to, and a page on chirashi (sushi rice in a bowl with toppings scattered on, for nights when nobody wants to roll anything).

Neighbors in the kitchen: Sakura Asian Grocery | Japanese Exchange Student Diary (she taught her host family onigiri!) | Rosa's Kitchen Table | Kitchen Chemistry for Grown-Ups | Tokyo neighborhood Hungry visitors since April 1999: Questions, or a filling we should try? [email protected] Last updated September 17, 1999. © 1999 Kenji and Laura Mori. Itadakimasu!