Recipe: Vegan Sushi

I’ve blogged about sushi & the omega-3 loaded Nori sheets previously. Did it tempt you to give it a try, or did you need a recipe to give you a push?

Sushi making is one of things that needs a few ingredients and bits of kit to get you started, but once you’ve got them is very easy and not too expensive to maintain.  Then you might want to get elaborate and start tracking down more exotic ingredients like umeboshi plum puree to put into your sushi rolls. mmmmmmmmm.

For now we’re going to keep it simple.  3 rolls for 3 people:

1 packed/3 sheets of Nori

1 cup of sushi rice

1 & 1/2 cups of water

5 tblsps rice wine vinegar

1 tblsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1/4 red pepper, thinly sliced

1/2 avocado, thinly sliced

1 carrot, thinly sliced

1/2 courgette, thinly sliced

The only technical kit you’ll need is a sushi rolling mat and some chop sticks.

First wash the rice well under cold running water to release some of the starch, then bring to boil, stirring a few times before it does, reduce the heat and simmer.  Once the water has all gone and the rice is cooked, then use a wooden spoon to lay out in an oven dish to enable the rice to cool more quickly & evenly.

Mix the rice wine vinegar together with the salt and sugar and heat in the microwave for 30 seconds until the sugar has melted. Sprinkle over the rice and turn/mix the rice in the dish with the spoon to evenly coat and cool it.

Lay your Nori seaweed on the mat, I did shiny side down, and put a thin layer of rice from the bottom of the sheet to about 3/4’s of the way up. You can use a wooden spoon or your fingers to do this.  Fill the rice vinegar jug up with some water and use this to keep your fingers wet when dealing with the rice. The rice should be about 1/2 thick and be evenly spread to the edges.

Next about an inch in from the bottom, lay 2 slices of red pepper side by side and keep going across until you have a line (it can stick out the ends as we’ll trim these off) and do a layer on top of avocado, carrot or courgette. Mix and match!

Then use the sushi mat to roll the nori and rice over the filling, squeezing a little as you do to keep the roll tight, and keep rolling until it’s all rolled up. Cover in clingfilm if you want to keep it fresh for a while (the fridge dries out the rice so best to make them as close to serving as possible).

When all your rolls are roled, use a super sharp knife and keep dipping it in the watery vinegar mix to help keep the edge clean, to trim the ends off and cut into 6 – 8 rolls.

Experiment with other vegetables – cucumber is a classic and I personally love mango.