Sam and I have been meaning to make our own sushi since my birthday, but what with getting married, holidaying and Sam’s studies, we hadn’t found the time.

We had all the ingredients ready; sushi rice, sushi vinegar, the bamboo rolling mat, a ten pack of nori and something tasty for the middle.

Not really sure what we were doing, beyond what a guy had told Sam over the shop counter, we consulted recipe books and YouTube’s “How to make Sushi” videos. joschez’s 4 min short was the most helpful:

Rather than measuring out the rice, which would have been clever, we used the whole packet. About 500g of uncooked rice, which combined with water comes to about 1.2kg. Oh dear, that’s going to be a LOT of sushi; at least we’ll get to practice a lot.

We cleaned the rice, and let it soak for 30 mins. With the correctly measured amounts of water, we brought it to the boil (in a normal saucepan) and let it simmer on a low heat for a further 20 mins. Then it had another 10 mins of cooling before we added the vinegar, 1 tablespoon per 150g of rice. Because we had so much rice we split it into batches of 300g, which was just right for one roll. We fanned the rice, and let it cool under a damp towel. It came out perfectly sticky.

Now the fun bit; with the nori laid out on the rolling mat, we took turns making rolls. With wet hands (otherwise rice will stick to everything!), we spread the rice across the seaweed to create an even layer, leaving space at the back as the envelope edge.

For the tasty middles we used whatever we could find; cucumber, pepper, wasabi, egg, tuna, crab sticks, onion, smoked salmon and haddock (we completely forgot about our umeboshi puree). Choosing some of these ingredients, we lay them out in the middle of the rice, before wetting the nori edge and rolling using the bamboo, slowly and forcefully, just like the video told us to. Using Sam’s expensive kitchen knife, dipped in water to stop it sticking, we sliced the rolls.

All told, we made 6 different rolls and about 56 pieces of sushi. And we’ll be eating them all week.