24x24 intro to sushi making

Happy New Year!!! What did you all do?? John and I got to celebrate 24x24 Foodbuzz style and went to the NY wine and culinary center to take an intro to sushi class! We are serious sushi lovers so the thought of being able to make the stuff at home got us very excited. I was a little worried our rolls were going to look more like a science experiment then they would edible art... but I must say I was surprised how well we did!

The first thing we learned was how to properly cook the rice. You have to make sure to rinse it until the water runs clear (rinse about 3 times). Put the rice in a pan and distribute evenly. Now we add the water (unmeasured!) basically stick your finger in so it lightly touches the top of the rice, and fill the pot with water until the water is up to your first knuckle. Turn your heat on high and once it starts boiling turn it to medium and simmer until you can't see any more water above the rice line. Now turn off the heat and cover with tinfoil, let sit for 10 minutes. While it's sitting mix together 1/3 cup rice wine vinegar, 1 Tbs kosher salt, and 3 Tbs sugar. Now the fun part, drizzle the vinegar mixture in and fluff around using chopsticks (don't mash the rice), then spread it out onto a cookie sheet and start fanning it like made to cool it down!

FAN FASTER!!!! Yes I was actually jokingly yelling this at John as he fanned... the other students gave us some funny looks... HA!

I asked the teacher if he was sure this was a real step and not just trying to fool us all into looking ridiculous :)

OK now that you have your rice it's time to make some rolls! We each were given a sushi mat and fully covered them in saran wrap. Take a sheet of nori (it's seaweed) and place it shinny side up. Keep a bowl of water to dip your fingers in to the side. Dip your fingers and take a handful of rice and place in the center of the nori, gently spread out to cover the full sheet side to side, leaving 1/2 inch at the top and 1/4 inch at the bottom (if you are doing an inside out roll, rice on the outside, leave 1/4 inch at both the top and bottom). Try not to handle the rice too much and smash it, you want them to stay individual pieces of rice, not a bunch of moosh.

Next add in your guts (2/3 of the way down, make sure you have all ingredients equally distributed)! We made all different kinds of rolls. Veggie rolls with avocado and cucumber, ones with crab sticks and spicy mayo, I made one with salmon, avocado and honey YUM! John even tempura fried some shrimp and made a super delicious roll with them! Yes you read that right, the man who doesn't eat fried things actually tempura fried his own shrimp!! Go husband!

Now to get rolling, bring the side closest to you up and curl it around your guts, apply equal pressure across the length of the roll with your left hand as you pull the bamboo sheet away from you with your right hand.

Continue pulling away and pressing down until the roll is fully out of the bamboo sheet and on the table.

Now to slice, the most important thing is that you have a super sharp knife... otherwise... whomp whomp. Total smooshed not so pretty badness. Also make sure you slice your roll evenly so the pieces are all the same size.

How super easy was that?? I think the hardest part was cutting them without smooshing the insides out. What combos would you do? One of my favorites at a local sushi place is a tempura shrimp, crab stick, spicy mayo, spinach, tomato, and BACON!! Yeah it's a biggie, but it's delicious!!

Full disclosure, Foodbuzz paid to make our event possible. Thanks Foodbuzz!

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