Making Sushi
A lot of people confuse sushi to be raw fish. Well, a lot of caucasians confuse sushi to be raw fish…:P Sushi is basically steam cooked japanese rice wrapped with whatever you fancy, really. Do a wiki search on sushi - it’s interesting. Sashimi, and not sushi, is the name for served raw fish. There are many types of sushi but the sushi I am making are called sushi rolls - the most common sushi type you see in sushi bars.
The perfect sushi is actually in the rice. It doesn’t matter what you put in it as long as you got your rice right, you’re good.
What you need for the PERFECT sushi rice:
3 cups of rice
3 3/4 cup water
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
The rest of the ensemble:
Nori (seaweed sheets)
cucumbers, julienned
carrots, julienned
red peppers, julienned
optional filling: kimchi, kimchi fried chicken, roasted pork, teriyaki chicken, etc etc etc.
Once that is done, here we go, sushi step by step:
First you will need to clean the rice:
You gotta make sure that you clean them well - that means getting rid of the white murkiness of the water. And at the same time, you polish the rice by rubbing them in your hands gently. The rice is very fragile and will break so just do it like how you would play mud, for example.
Once your rice is clean, you add 3 3/4 cup water into the rice and let it cook in a rice cooker.
While your rice is cooking, you prepare your sushi vinegar (sushi-zu) that you add at the end when the rice is cooked. So you combine the rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt and stir it till all solids are dissolved. Putting the vinegar solution in the microwave for 30 seconds to heat, will help with dissolving the solids :)
Once that’s done and your rice is cook. You fluff it up with a fork or your rice scoop gently and pour the sushi vinegar in. Stir the rice to combine flavors…stir as how you would fold a cake batter - and while you’re at it, fan the rice with a magazine using the other hand or just do it like me; blow air into the rice with your mouth. Becareful not to spit in it :P
Your rice should be sticky and not mushy. Each rice grain should look polished and shiny, just like in the picture. Scoop your rice out onto a plate.
It’s now time to assemble your sushi! I even made my own gari (pickled ginger; recipe later) as you can see in the picture.
Here’s my sushi mat and my nori sheets.
So put a the rice on the nori sheet like in the picture…
Start adding your filling. I live with a vegetarian, so i added julienned tofu pieces whcih i marinated with some soy, pepper and mushroom sauce.
Roll your sushi tightly. It’s the beginning that is the hardest but once you get the hang of it, every other time would be a breeze.
So, in the end, you should get a tightly rolled sushi just like the picture. Continue rolling until you used up all the rice. 3 cups of rice should yield you about 5 rolls of sushi - depending on how big or small u want them to be.
Cut the sushi into 1 inch thick rolls. And you have a feast :)
I made a sushi out of stir fried kimchi chicken for myself. The result? Absolutely scrumptious!
Source: A series of kitchen experiments
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