Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy
vegan cooking show.
I’m Heather and tonight we are making sushi.
Now for those of you who think you need to
use the white sticky sushi rice, you don’t
have to.
I use short grain brown rice.
It is pretty sticky.
It definitely gonna hold your nori roll together.
It is a lot healthier than white rice.
It has all the nutrients in it.
Go with brown rice.
Now nori is a sheet of seaweeds that holds
your sushi together looks like this and sea
vegetables in general are very good source
of minerals because they live in the sea they
grow from the minerals that are in there so
always a good idea to get some of those into
your diet.
They’re a very good source of iodine which
is crucial for the function of your thyroid
gland so if you find that you have a lot of
blood sugar fluctuations, try eating more
seaweeds and see if that helps.
Thyroid helps to control metabolism and fluctuating
blood sugar can have an effect on thyroid.
Anyway, always good to get more of it and
sushi is probably my favorite way to have
sea vegetables.
So what you do to start is your gonna cook
your rice and you wanna cook it ahead of time
so that it have time to cool down and then
what you’ll do is mix it up with a little
bit of vinegar.
Brown rice vinegar is the traditional.
I use apple cider vinegar because I like it.
I find it has a better balance but if you’re
a traditionalist you can go for the brown
rice that’s fine.
You want to stir it together with the rice
to get it a little bit stickier and I’ve
been told by my Japanese friend that I need
to be a little more respectful of my rice
and not ooze it.
So you want to try to mix this as gently as
possible.
Once your rice is ready to go, you’re gonna
chop up your vegetables and I’m using avocado
and some red pepper and for Sushi you really
don’t need a lot of vegetable, because they’re
roll up you want to keep things minimal and
make it small.
The other thing I’m gonna put on there is
some sprouts and I’ve got some fresh sprouts
here.
These are excellent to grow in the winter,
they have a ton of nutrients in them and they’re
very inexpensive if you grow them at home.
Now if you haven’t chop an avocado before,
all you do is take your avocado and you’re
gonna slice it around the pith.
You can’t go through the pith.
Well I haven’t tried but somehow I don’t
think it will go very well.
Ok, once you have it cut all the way around,
then all you do is give it a little twist
and its gonna come apart and the pith will
be on one side.
To get the pith out cleanly, give it a little
smack with your knife and the knife will go
right into the pith, hopefully not through
unless you cut your hand in half.
And then give it a little twist as well and
it will come out beautiful and clean.
Now this is how it works if your avocado is
ripe, if it’s not ripe the pith is not gonna
come out as easily, it’s not gonna chop
as nicely and it’s not gonna be as nutritious
for you because the nutrients will not be
ready for your body to absorb.
Also if this properly ripe the peel is just
going to come off nice and easy like that.
When you’re looking for avocado ripeness,
you wanna look for a color that’s very dark
and when you press it, it should be a little
bit soft but not too soft.
Key to cutting vegetables for sushi is to
make very small, thin slices.
Small was a slip of the mouth, what I meant
to say was just thin.
Ok, you want them really thin, same thing
with the peppers.
Avocados are sticky.
Same thing with the peppers, you want to just
cut them very very thinly so that you get
a nice tight sushi roll.
Nice pepper.
A sushi mat is not really a necessity but
it’s gonna make things a lot easier especially
if it’s your first time rolling.
What you wanna do is take your mat and if
you see these lines of thread, they go lengthwise.
You want that pointed away from you when you’re
rolling.
Then we take your nori roll, they are two
sides.
One is kind of mat, the other is quite a bit
shinier.
I’m not sure if you can see that but ok
shiny?
Not quite as shiny and you can see if I hold
it to the light there are some lines on my
nori roll right here, right here.
See those?
Those are kind of guides where you should
cut and that’s a little bit thicker than
what I normally cut but anyway what you wanna
do is when you have your sheet, line it up
with the lines on your mat.
You don’t have it to be perfectly in line
but that’s the direction you want to be
rolling.
So lay it down there, put some rice on it.
You wanna spread it out so that the rice goes
just the edge back here, goes as close as
you can on the edge here and you wanna leave
a strip at the end for where its gonna seal
together.
And a lot of places will tell you to smush
this down and that’s how I use to do it
but a friend of mine who is Japanese told
me that this is not nice for the rice so we’re
gonna not do that.
What you do is take your vegetables, lay them
out in a line here so there’s room back
here and then the vegetables and then there’s
a lot of room here plus that strip.
And then I’ve got some sprouts that I’m
gonna put in here as well.
Now sprouts is not your traditional sushi
fixing but I love sprouts so I love them in
my sushi and that’s what I’m gonna do.
When you roll this, you take the back edge,
you’re gonna press down here on your vegetables,
take your back edge and fold it over.
Ok?
Then you’re going to squish it back, take
your bamboo mat out because it doesn’t make
for good eating, roll it over again, squish
it back this way towards you.
Squish it down a little bit down, down and
make sure you’re squishing all along the
row.
Get your bamboo mat out again, roll it again,
give it a little squish and then the final
time is where we seal that end bit off.
And there you go, you can see it has a nice
clean seal except for these stray bits of
rice and then if you let this sit for a few
minutes it will cut out much easier.
Now what I do when I’m rolling is I keep
these guys in order.
This is the one I rolled first and this is
the one I rolled last and then I’m gonna
cut them in that order because the nori softens
up as it sits with the rice and it will be
a lot easier to cut once it had a few minutes
to sit.
And all you do to cut, it helps to wet your
knife a little bit otherwise the rice will
stick to it.
I’ve chopped off the end.
At the beginning your end might not be too
attractive and then just cut it in whatever
size you like.
Sometimes the end is pretty if you have a
little bit of stuffs taking in this has sprouts
sticking out to it.
So there’s the roll and yeah it does take
a bit of practice to be able to roll them
nicely so don’t get discourage if your first
ones don’t look too nice, you will get better
at it.
So some healthy vegan sushi, if the ends on
your rolls are not holding together very nicely
thinks of them as the treat of the sushi chef.
I like to have these with a little bit of
tamari.
Pickle ginger and wasabi is also nice if you
like the spice.
And these guys are my favorite to take at
a potluck because they travel so easily.
So I’m making this for Phil to take for
a potluck tomorrow night.
Hopefully they all enjoy them.
