What Goes on Sushi? PROBLEM SOLVED

The Lord of Hats

Recently, I was at a co-op quite a long ways away from my home, and on a whim I decided to try my hand and rolling some sushi. I picked up the seaweed (or nori, if that's the more correct term), some sushi rice, and some powdered wasabi, reasoning that I'd pick up the fish when I got home, so it'd be fresh. I also grabbed a mat to roll it with.

Now I'm back (in Minnesota, if that gives you an idea of what'll be available to me), and I've just now remembered that every time I've had sushi, there's been stuff in it besides the fish. Unfortunately, the local supermarket doesn't stock sushi stuff, so if there's an easy-to-find ingredient I could use, I wouldn't be able to discern it as such.

Does anyone have any recommendations for what I could use?

1ddqd

Crab meat, avocado, cream cheese are a few of the things that come to mind. The sushi roll I get has fried (tempura) shrimp, avocado, more shrimp on the outside, and some eel sauce, with rice and seaweed wrap. Can't really remember much else off the top of my head :-/

Al_wat

Cucumber, possibly carrots, avocado slices, hot sauce (other than just wasabi).

Sometimes also that crunchy... deep fried stuff... can't remember the name of it..
Tempura thats it.





edit....

bastard, now I had to go and order sushi.:P

VisionOfClarity

Tobiko also.

admanb

If you have fish there generally won't be anything else, except occasionally avocado.

The non-fish rolls often include the aforementioned: cucumber, imitation crab meat, avocado, carrot, tempura, etc.

NotYou

yea, it's very normal to have nothing but fish in tuna/yellowtail/etc rolls.

MoSiAc

The place I frequent puts like tuna salad on a roll, fried shrimp on a roll, raw tuna slices on patted rice. Some of the new ones are hamburger and hotdog sushi. The hotdog was nasty but hamburger isn't that bad if you're into that.

Inquisitor77

Cream cheese? Oh hell no. Cream cheese on sushi is an abomination. You go to hell. You go to hell and you die.

illig

put in whatever you want... it's your "sushi"

a place i've visited before had sweet peanut butter rolls... pretty good too

EskimoDave

I want sushi now...

edit - It was good and half off.

Cauld

if you want ideas go to the grocery store and look at sushi. Since I also live in mn i'll recommend you go to a higher class grocery store like byerly's, lunds, or kowalski's. All of those make the sushi fresh there and you could even ask the people making it how they do it, etc. They're used to that stuff.

LavaKnight

I've had banana in sushi before, too. It's pretty good.

They general crunchy veggies are good (cucumber, carrots) sliced really thin, but I don't think a lot of extra ingredients go in with fish rolls. Throw together what sounds good to you!

Edit: Nothin' wrong with cream cheese, for all you haters.

Fallingman

Before I start... "Cream Cheese"? Dude.

Good common ones would be smoked salmon (raw is better, but if you're new, then smoked can be fine) and avocado. Any veges like carrot, cucumber, peppers etc are good. I fried some cut up chicken in teriyaki sauce once - that went down well...

Steel Angel

While I wouldn't ever want cream cheese in my sushi, I will point out that I was once in a sushi place in Japan where there was sushi that was bacon on top of rice. In US sushi restaurants, there tends to be a pretty standard list of offerings that doesn't change from place to place, especially in the "Japanese" restaurants where the staff is actually Chinese, Korean, or Mexican. But it's a type of format where chefs will experiment and tweak things to their liking.

That said, the advice about fish going into sushi alone is generally true. Sometimes it'll be more than one kind of fish together, but the same idea applies. Eel is kind of the exception in that it'll usually have cucumber with it, but eel is also cooked and marinated unlike the other fish normally used.

mts

carrots
cucumber
cilantro
crab
sprouts
avocado
some green onion

Underdog

VisionOfClarity wrote: »

Tobiko also.

This is a fantastic filling or topping. Pick the tiny ones. My mom got a box of 'em and whenever we do sushi night, we pull it out and spoon some into a dish for everyone to add as they please. Adds a nice salty flavour and some crunch too.

Also, flavouring your rice is a must. I add some seasoned rice vinegar to it immediately after it finishes cooking and then mix it all around. Adds that nice hint of sour. To be honest, mostly we just go nori, rice, salmon and call that a roll. Otherwise, california roll filling is the other popular choice; cucumber, crab meat and avacado. Preserved radish is also a nice touch. Looks like this:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1054/545405726_c2dcac0952.jpg

The Lord of Hats

Thanks guys, you've been a fantastic help. I was terrified that I had done something horribly wrong by not picking up some of the weirder sushi stuff (I think I saw sea cucumbers, or something in a jar). Problem solved.

Also, I would like to clarify that when I said Minnesota, I meant 'middle of nowhere in MN'. Nowhere around here does sushi. I'm going to edit the title now.

Ponge

I don't know if you've ever made sushi before but there is more to making the rice than just cooking it, I can't remember the full process but you have to cook it with rice wine and stuff as well to get the proper flavour/texture.

Crab roe is great for sushi, little orange balls of tasty!

If you have a high quality fishmongers nearby then you can get some nice fatty tuna, maybe some sea urchins for sashimi also.

-edit:

Here's Alton Browns sushi rice recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sushi-rice-recipe/index.html

mts

what we usually do is just mix some rice vinegar with sugar and then put that on the rice, mix gently then put it on the nori

poshniallo

mts wrote: »

what we usually do is just mix some rice vinegar with sugar and then put that on the rice, mix gently then put it on the nori

That's the core - sushi is sweet vinegared rice. All the rest (raw fish, nori, American-style stuff like tuna salad) is toppings.

I like cucumber rolls (called kappa-maki). Any seafood is good but just remember that in the USA you should cook that seafood unless you've been told by a fishmonger it's fresh enough for sashimi/sushi.