Beginner’s sushi

Ingredients:

1 cup sushi rice, uncooked
3 cups water
2 tbsp mirin
3 nori seaweed papers

Equipment:

1 bamboo rolling mat
glass water on standby

Fillings:

Peeled cucumber cut into batons
Cold BBQ chicken thighs, sliced into strips
Peeled cooked prawns
Sushi grade salmon
Butter lettuce

Method:

Place uncooked rice in 3 cups of cold water, bring to the boil and simmer until cooked.

Rinse rice thoroughly, but delicately as you want to keep the form of the rice, I rinsed the cooked rice three times in cold water.
Put the rice into the refrigerator to cool completely before using.

Prepare all the ingredients and have them ready to use.

Add 2 tbsp of mirin to the cool rice; thoroughly mix through with a spoon.

Lie a seaweed sheet over the bamboo mat and position the two lengthways away from you. Place a little of the rice (about ¼ of a cup) on the near side of the seaweed sheet and flatten into a rectangle shape into a sausage shape, leaving about 3cm of the seaweed sheet clear of rice nearest to you.

Place a little of the filling across the centre of the rice and then gently pick up the end of the bamboo mat closest to you and start rolling away from your body as tightly as possible.

Make sure you leave about 3cm at the far end of your roll without rice/filling. When you have finished rolling, dip your fingers into the water and wet the strip of seaweed on the end to close and seal the sushi.

With a sharp knife, chop the sushi into bite-sized pieces.

Notes:

Rolling sushi is definitely one of those techniques that gets easier and better with practice. By the time I had finished all the rice I had made, my sushi was looking a whole lot better than when I first began!
We’ll definitely make again! I highly recommend it – it would be great thing to do with teens as an activity too. I’m now eager to try making some of my faves from the sushi bar – tempura prawn, cooked tuna with corn…
Mirin is Japanese vinegar. You can find it most good sized supermarkets these days.
A lot of sushi that you buy includes Japanese mayonnaise. Rather than buy it, I cheated and watered down some regular mayonnaise so it was the consistency of tomato sauce.
I have listed the fillings I used to make sushi this time, but obviously the sky is the limit when it comes to choosing sushi fillings. Avocado, carrot sticks and tuna (tinned or fresh) are others that I could have used but didn’t this time around.
This recipe was created by Melissa Klemke for Kidspot, New Zealand’s best recipe finder.