Although cooking can be an easy, every-day-life task for some, it can also be a challenging game of puzzles for most. Specifically when it comes to workaholics and the game players out there in the office working long hours without having time to blink or gasp for air, cooking can be a dream hobby that is often disregarded and thrown into the dustbin. For Japanese food lovers, sushi is definitely a dream dish – how good will it be to make sushi at home and enjoy the homemade flavors yourself? Well, it is not an unobtainable task.

Everybody loves Japanese food, especially sushi. And of course, when sushi comes to mind, people often go to a Japanese restaurant with a strong desire for authentic, Japanese cuisine served on the traditional, Japanese bamboo trays. In tougher days where nights are cold and roads are full of traffic, home dining might be the only option available.

Homemade sushi is always better with people to enjoy the meal. As sushi is a Japanese food that can be consumed simply with hands, it is an all-time suitable treat for parties, business meetings, conferences, and events in general.

However, people often believe making Japanese cuisine at home is rather challenging; truth is, it is quite simple to make Japanese food, specifically sushi, if all ingredients are well prepared prior to the cooking process. Japanese cuisine is known for its delicacy, grace, and rich flavors, mixing the tastes of raw fish and seafood with a combination of cooked Japanese-style rice with vinegar.

Although most believe making Nigiri sushi at home is difficult, it can be mastered and perfected in time. If we genuinely understand the beauty of Japanese food and truly see through its subtlety that comes with divine deliciousness, anyone can cook Japanese food without all the hassles needed to reserve a table during the weekend. Ingredients are highly significant and are the essential factors of making sushi.

Therefore, it is a must to select fine ingredients, especially fish, to make your preferred dishes. Apart from Nigiri sushi, Maki sushi like California rolls can also be simply made at home. California rolls are mostly preferred by people who are first introduced to sushi. As raw fish and other raw ingredients might be a little bizarre for first-triers, cooked ingredients in California rolls are a safe start.

California rolls are among the easiest to prepare and cook at home.

The main difference California rolls have compared to Nigiri sushi is that the ingredients are all well-cooked and there is no need for raw ingredients like raw fish. In the early 50-60s, Japanese chefs and wealthy businessmen began to invest in opening numerous traditional Japanese restaurants in the United States, specifically in the state of California.
At first, Japanese fast food like tempura and deep-fried meat topped on Japanese rice as well as noodle dishes like Yakizoba were gaining some popularity. However, it turned out that raw fish and sushi are not very popular.
Why doesn’t sushi satisfy Californians or even the Americans in general? That is all due to the lack of acceptance in consuming any kind of meat raw.

With that problem, a new sushi menu is made. By adding in all the ingredients Americans and other foreigners would love: crab sticks, Tamago eggs (Japanese sweet egg roll), and mayonnaise, people would be able to enjoy cooked sushi rather than eating raw meat. And also because people need convenience in food, California rolls are made simple so that anyone can make it simply from home and be able to enjoy it freely even without utensils.

To start off, the right way to cook Japanese rice for California rolls is very essential.

  1. Add 1 piece of Konbu seaweed to the filled rice (approximately 300g of rice is an appropriate amount) then cook the rice using a normal rice cooker.
  2. Then, add seasoned vinegar (50 ml vinegar mixed with 14 g sugar and 5 g salt) and mix them together quickly.
  3. Place the seaweed on the sushi roll, then scoop the rice and place it on the seaweed; spread the rice out equally onto the seaweed sheet. Then, place a plastic wrap over the rice.
  4. Grab the seaweed sheet and turn it over, putting the other side up. Place the lettuce, crab sticks, grilled Tamago eggs, and avocado in the center of the seaweed.
  5. Hold the edge of the slat and roll it in a circle, holding it where you want it to be at the very end.
  6. Hold the rice ball and squeeze it tight by pulling the slat out little by little.
  7. Then, remove the slat and cut the rice balls into bite-sized pieces along with the plastic wrap.
  8. After the latter, remove the plastic wrap then sprinkle the outsides of the rice balls with Ebiko. You can sprinkle Ebiko on the rolls or spread Ebiko on a flat dish, then place the rolls down to allow the Ebiko pieces to stick.

Summary

The key problem is the fishyness of raw fish Which Americans who like to eat cooked food are unfamiliar with it, which is different from steak dishes that are even medium-rare grilling.

As long as you are creative to use varying ingredients and try out different knife-cutting and slicing techniques, a homemade sushi is never a challenging task.

Let’s start off with making the Japanese sushi rice. Without delicious, vinegar-mixed cooked Japanese rice, a sushi can never be good as it should.