make your own sushi rolls

After talking about it for forever, Allen and I finally attempted to make our own sushi this weekend and it turned out pretty well.

We treated ourselves to a rice cooker with one of our Bed Bath & Beyond wedding gift cards and I have to say that it made the prefect sticky rice for sushi so I highly recommend one.  We got this one

We went to the grocery store and gathered up all the ingredients.  Luckily HEB had everything we needed so we didn't have to go to a specialty store of any kind.

We chose to make a modified version of California Rolls that included crab meat, avocado, jalapeno, cream cheese and spicy mayo sauce (sriracha and mayo) topped with panko bread crumbs.

We will call this the Spicy Roberts Roll

(neither of us like cucumber so it was left out on purpose)

I love to sit at the actual sushi bar and watch the sushi chefs create everything so I had a pretty general idea of how to go about making our own rolls.  However, this little adventure was not without it's trial and errors.  Our first roll fell apart almost immediately and we had to start over and try it again with the next roll.  I will say that it is so much easier to do the nori on the outside instead of rice on the outside which I prefer.  I will do my best to master the rice outside and show that another time.

Allen cut up all our ingredients into pretty strips

we used mayo on our hands to keep the rice from sticking but let me know if there's something you've used (or that you try) that's better

after the first failed roll I looked at a photo on the back of the rolling mat box that showed you leave a bit of the nori uncovered by rice to stick to itself when rolled

layer in all the ingredients centered on the rice

the rolling part is kinda tricky and you really just have to roll it as tight as you can.  We tried cutting with one of our non-serrated chef knives but it ended up being so much easier using a serrated knife and kind-of "saw" it while cutting each individual roll

It turned out rather well and I'm seriously impressed with our results.  After the first failed attempt I thought we weren't going to get it right but we ended up doing pretty well.

California rolls aren't my favorite just for lack of flavor (imitation crab-meat) so next time we will be making something with way more flavor.  You can add anything you want and I have to admit that we will probably be trying this more often now that we know what we're doing rather than going to over-priced sushi restaurants here in town.

I hope this motivates you to make your own too!  Let me know if you find a combination that you love