Easy Sushi Rolls

 I attempted sushi rolls for the first time last night. It was actually a lot easier than it looks. 

I don't have a rice cooker, so I had to use a saucepan. It worked just fine. I used a recipe from All Recipes: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/perfect-sushi-rice/

Ingredients: 

2 cups sushi rice

3 cups water

1/2 cup rice vinegar

1 Tablespoons oil

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Rinse your rice in a colander until the water runs clear. Add it to 3 cups of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover it, and reduce the heat to low. Let it cook for 20 minutes. (I didn't remove the lid the entire time.) 

Meanwhile, combine the rice vinegar, oil, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Cool this mixture. Stir it in the cooked sushi rice. Continue stirring it until the water is absorbed. At this point, I put the rice in the refrigerator to cool a little while before I started rolling the sushi. 

Lay out a Nori seaweed sheet on a bamboo mat. (I got both of these things from Amazon.) 

Scoop a ball of the sushi rice on the mat. (Make sure you wet your hands with a mixture of rice vinegar and water. It will prevent the rice from sticking to your hands.) Spread the rice evenly around the seaweed. (Be sure not to press the rice too hard. You want to keep the rice as fluffy as possible.)

Then I placed the ingredients on one end of the rice. Here I used smoked salmon, avocado, cucumber slices, and carrots. 

Roll the end of the seaweed sheet around the fillers. Then continue rolling the rest of the way up. I found it easier to not use the bamboo mat when rolling it up. I used the bamboo roller to tighten the roll. Roll the sushi roll back and forth in the bamboo mat to tighten and seal the ingredients. This site is a good tutorial: http://www.wikihow.com/Roll-Sushi

Let the long roll sit for about a minute. Then, using a sharp, wet knife, cut the roll into bite-size pieces. Some of the other combinations pictured: imitation crab, avocado, cucumber, carrots; avocado and cucumber; avocado, cucumber, and carrots. We dipped them in soy sauce and other spring roll sauces. If you don't like the seaweed wrap, you can remove it from the outside after the rolls have cooled.