Japanese Recipes for Healthy Living

Archive for the ‘Sushi’ Category

Among all the Japanese food recipes, I think Sushi recipes are the most popular ones. When people talk about sushi, they usually talk about the fish not the rice. But sushi rice is a big part of sushi, and if the sushi rice is not good, the sushi wouldn’t taste great no matter how good the fish is. So I will show you how to make good sushi rice today.

Ingredients for 3 cups of sushi rice:

• 1 and 1/2 cups Japanese rice
• 1 and 3/4 cups water
• 3 Tbsp rice vinegar
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 4′x4′ kombu (dried kelp), wiped with a dried towel
  

  Kombu, Konbu, Kelp

Direction:

1. Rinse the rice. Measure out the rice into a bowl, fill the bowl with enough water to wet the rice, and Drain the water. Wash the rice with hands well, and drain the water. Repeat the wash and drain 2 or 3 times. Drain the rice in a drainer and set aside for about 30 minutes.

2. Cook the rice. If you have a rice cooker, just put the rinsed rice, water and kombu in the cooker, and turn on the switch. If you don’t have a rice cooker, cook it in a pot. Put the rinsed rice, water and kombu in the pot, and bring the rice to a boil, then reduce to the lowest heat setting to maintain a simmer.  Cook the rice for 15 minutes.

Cooked rice with kombu

Let it sit WITHOUT REMOVING THE LID for another 15 minutes.  Remove the lid and fluff the rice with a rice paddle.

3. Season the Rice. While the rice is cooking, combine rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a small bowl.  Stir the mixture until the sugar is dissolved. Once the rice is finished cooking and steaming, turn it out into a large  wooden bowl or plastic or glass bowl. Sprinkle some of the vinegar mixture evenly over the rice.  With cutting motions, use your rice paddle to mix and fold the vinegar into the rice (the cutting motion prevents the rice from getting smashed).

making sushi rice

Leave it until it’s cooled down.

Now it’s ready to make sushi!

*If you can’t find kombu, you can make sushi rice without it, but kombu makes a huge difference. So I strongly recommend you to use kombu.

Tuna and Avocado Sushi Dome

I love fresh tuna with sushi rice. But making a sushi roll is too much work when you’re hungry. So I sometimes make this. You don’t need nori (seaweed sheet) or any tool to roll a sushi. But it tastes like sushi, and it looks beautiful.

Ingredients

• 1/4 pounds fresh raw tuna (ask if that’s good enough for sushi at a grocery store.), sliced
• 1 Avocado, sliced
• 

  Tuna and avocado sliced

• Soy sauce
• Wasabi
• 2 cups  sushi rice

Directions

1. Lay a plastic wrap on a small rice bowl.

Rice bowl with plastic wrap

2. Put tuna and avocado slices on the bottom of the rice bowl.

Tuna and avocado

3. Put sushi rice on top of the tuna and avocado, and push it lightly.

Tuna, avocado and rice

4. Cover the rice bowl with a dish and turn them upside down. Then remove the rice bowl and plastic wrap.

rice bowl removed

Serve soy sauce in a small plate. You can mix up soy sauce and wasabi in the small plate, and pour that on top of this sushi dome.