Homemade Sushi!

We finally took the leap and made our own sushi. Steve and I have been enjoying sushi for maybe two years now and have really enjoyed the experience and the food, but we have been toying with the idea of making our own for about 8-9 months. We had heard from friends, family and blogs that it can be really easy, but we had our doubts.

This past weekend we celebrated our anniversary and wanted to do something different for our anniversary supper and instead of going out we decided to take the leap and make our own sushi.

We went to Sobeys on the weekend and bought everything we thought that we would want (we are just sushi-beginners so our attempts and tastes may seem calm, but it was a big step for us). We bought the bamboo sushi board/roller, sticky rice, rice paper (we do not like the seaweed option), salmon, cucumber and carrots. And to ensure we didn't go into this dinner blind we did choose to watch a few youtube videos on how to properly lay out the rice/salmon/veggies, how to roll it and how to cut it. After about 10 minutes of watching videos we felt well enough prepared to start trying it ourselves.

We began by Steve making the sticky rice and me cutting up the cucumbers and carrots.

Then we started to prepare the rice paper by dampening a cloth/paper towel and placing the rice paper inside for about a minute. We found it worked best to gently press on the damp cloth/paper towel while the rice paper was inside. Once the rice paper was ready we placed it onto the bamboo board/roller and began to place the sticky rice over it (leaving a 1.5 cm space at the top of the rice paper to allow for the roll to seal). Note - the sticky rice is very sticky! make sure you have a bowl of water/sink near by to clean off your hands in the process.  Once we had the sticky rice placed over the rice paper we began to add the salmon, cucumber and carrots.

After laying out the rice, salmon, cucumber and carrots we began to roll it up. We gradually rolled and tucked, about 4 or 5 times until we came to the end of the rice paper (the part that we had left clear of sticky rice). To make the ends of the rice paper come together well we did one final roll and tuck and then slowly began to pull the bamboo board/roller away from the sushi; which resulted in a perfect roll every time (we were very surprised by this. Then we moved the roll over to a cutting board, grabbed a very sharp knife, wet the knife, cut the roll in the center, wet the knife again and cut each half of the roll into another half. Each full roll resulted in 6 pieces of sushi. And here is our final result:

We made about 40 pieces of sushi in total, we ate half for supper and Steve took the remaining half into work today for lunch and to share with others.

We had a great first experience making sushi and cannot wait to try it again! If you like sushi I highly recommend you try making your own - such a rewarding experience!

Bon appetit & enjoy!