Making Sushi at Home Isn't Easy or Cheap. But It's a Hell of a Lot of Fun.
Putting aside all of the very bad stuff for a moment, COVID-19 has been like a round of Freeze Dance. The music stopped at some point in March and we all found ourselves stuck wherever we happened to be before everything shut down. For those stranded with a large family, multiple roommates, or a dense slew of neighbors, home entertaining quickly morphed into home quarantaining.
My wife and I wrangle five children, so in my house in Richmond, Virginia, the rigors of social distancing mean we're feeding seven people three meals a day. By Day 27, we had Pollyanna’d our way through Spring Roll Thursday and Spaghetti From Scratch Sunday, but cheer gradually waned as larders emptied, meals repeated, and dishes mounted. There was no corner bistro to escape to. Richmond’s acclaimed restaurants, like those around the country, had gone dark.
So this was not an ideal time for a serious sushi craving. Especially since Masa's make-your-own-temaki-box-for-four is only available on Fridays in New York City… and for $800. Yowza.
We can make sushi ourselves, I thought, but… could we, really? Finessing raw fish sounded as improbable as glove-boning a whole chicken. On the other hand, Jacques Pépin does it like he’s ringin’ a bell. People around the country are suddenly gardening, fermenting, baking sourdough. Why not nigiri?
These days, sushi is a luxury—a decadent relic of a time long ago, before COVID-19, when we reveled in pleasures like cocktail bars, omakase, and company. But there’s another side. If sushi had a back label, you’d see a simplicity of ingredients, impressive protein density, and omega-3s. Ginger, wasabi, and nori are all immuno-boosters. Sushi doesn’t equal hedonism when it’s feeding well-being.
Sequestered with a crew as large as mine, you don’t just make food. You make food an activity—a game. This one required a little strategizing, but hey, we had time. A copy of Atsuko Ikeda’s excellent Sushi Made Simple helped, too. To start, I wondered, how much fish and rice did we need? I reached out to Jihan Lee, chef and partner at Nami Nori in New York City. His rule of thumb is one cup of cooked rice and five-to-seven ounces of fish per person. Each roll, or sheet of nori, takes one-half to three-quarters cup cooked rice, and yields five (fat) to eight (skinny) pieces. Got that?
Per Person
1 c. rice
5-7 oz. fish
Per Roll
1 sheet nori
.5 - .75 c. rice
fish to taste
Next, I ordered the raw materials (so to speak) through Fulton Fish Market, the online retailer connected to New York City’s iconic fish hub that pays restaurants for referring customers. I scored nori, soy sauce, and sesame sundries from Kim’C Market, which delivers across the country, and gives back to the community and vital non-profits. In short, even if your favorite seafood joint is shuttered, you can still feel good, eat good, and fund restaurant recovery by supporting quality. And quality we got. Our overnighted box included gorgeous red Yellowfin tuna, bright orange Faroe Islands salmon, iridescent Spanish mackerel, U/10 wild sea scallops, Icelandic trout roe, and Portuguese octopus tentacles cooked just right.
I soon realized: You can construct this. It’s a handful of ingredients. Fish, rice, vegetables, nori, rice vinegar, and soy sauce are the essentials. Pickled ginger and fresh wasabi, too, but you won’t perish without them. Don’t have a proper bamboo rolling mat? Repurpose a kitchen towel or a not-too-stiff place mat. You’ll also want a sharp knife. We didn’t have a proper, $1,750 Japanese yanagiba sashimi knife in the drawer, so we opted for this affordable bad boy.
I cooked the rice. Neal Brown, chef and owner of Ukiyo in Indianapolis, uses a super-premium short-grain rice: “If you’re not using Koshihikari, you’re probably doing it wrong,” he had advised me in a FaceTime session. Chef Lee, knowing we’re all stuck at home, countered with a different insight: “You can use any short-grain rice. It’s more moist, but not as sticky. Use a little less water, so that it doesn’t get mushy.” Brown prefers his pretty firm, too. “I back off from a one-to-one ratio,” he said. Instead, he uses no more than three-quarters cup water per cup of dry rice. “No salt, no vinegar, just rice and water.” Others rinse their rice multiple times before cooking. Brown told me that once would be fine.
While the rice cooked, I stirred up some easy sauces. Spicy mayo and sweet sesame seemed like good starts. Then I prepped vegetables: long, thin strips of cucumber and carrot, medallions of radish, dominoes of avocado. As for the fish—the main event, after all—I cut some tuna loin and salmon fillet into long strips for the rolls. I also sliced rectangles: thin ones on the bias (think flank steak) for nigiri and thicker ones for sashimi. As with carving steak, I sought out the grain. “Don’t cut with the angle of the sinew, cut against it to shorten the sinew as much as possible,” Lee advised me. “When you bite into it, it’ll be much softer.” The firm octopus was easy to manipulate. The delicate scallops and mackerel took a more deft touch that made me thankful for the pro-grade knife.
During prep, I FaceTimed again with Brown in Indianapolis to make sure I was doing it right. Once the rice had finished, he told me to leave the lid on for about 15 more minutes. “Don’t touch it. The key is allowing it to steam,” he said. “The Japanese guys will be like, ‘That guy’s out of his fucking mind,’ but I’m really not, I do this every day. We all have our little secrets.”
As the rice steamed, we prepared the seasoning solution, a kind of sweet pickling liquid. Make your own. My wife prefers salt to sweet, so we tweaked to our liking. Brown recommended making a third of your volume of cooked rice.
Neal Brown’s “Sushizu” Rice Seasoning
1 part rice vinegar
.5 part granulated sugar
.25 part kosher salt
1 sheet konbu, broken up
We didn't have any konbu (thick, dried kelp), so let’s call that ingredient optional. While it was still hot, we spread the rice around a big, wooden salad bowl, drizzled the seasoning, and mixed continuously. We kept going until it tasted good and made sure, per Brown’s advice, to stop before the liquid pooled or the rice cooled. “The best sushi rice is served at body temp, but this isn’t make or break,” Brown told me. “The world is not coming to an end any faster if you don’t serve your rice right.”
Now came the Instagrammable part. “Make sure all of the ingredients are right and let people go to town,” Brown said. “Stick to rolls. Get some team-building in there. It’s supposed to be fun, not Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” Lee, whose restaurant is lauded for stunning temaki, added, “Hand rolls are the easiest things to do at home. Salmon, avocado, rice. Scallops, scallion, spicy mayo. The kids can make 10 different combinations with like six ingredients and wrap it up in nori like a spring roll.” Per both chefs’ recos, we treated it like taco night—we lined up the goodies, set out our rice in the middle of the island, gave everyone sheets of nori, and let ‘em at it.
We took turns with our one bamboo mat, wrapped in plastic film to keep the rice from sticking. We rolled mainly maki (nori outside, rice inside) and uramaki (rice outside, nori inside) to start; check out this easy-to-follow lesson from Sushi Made Simple. Then we played around with nigiri (sliced fish over rice) and sashimi (naked raw fish). Bright orange trout roe and crispy black sesame seeds saw tons of action. We had to ration a suddenly coveted avocado.
Kim’C’s organic seaweed was so much better than anything I’d ever found in a store, much nuttier and more textured. If your nori has has been lying around since before Emperor Akhito abdicated the throne last year, “Toast it up lightly on low heat to bring out the aroma and make it crispier,” said Lee. Great debate ensued over how to hold it to build and roll it. In her book, Ikeda held it horizontally. Both Brown and Lee suggested we go vertical. “Make the seaweed taller. You get a fatter roll, but it’s much easier to close up,” said Lee. “I like a bigger bite,” agreed Brown.
Some takeaways, after it was all devoured. Fresh wasabi and sesame seeds make a difference. Kids really dig it. Sushi is doable, but start early in the evening. There’s a reason you pay $15 a roll—it’s a process, and a kind of party. Bust out a big-ass bottle of Konteki "Tears of Dawn" Daiginjo, because lots of sake is a fine idea. So is feasting and saving the dishes for tomorrow. Speaking of, toss sushi-making odds and ends into a container with squeezes of lime and a quick sesame dressing. Hello, next-day poké bowl! As for leftover fish, trim it, wrap it tightly, and freeze for another go, you know, when the music starts back up.
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