If you’re the type of person who has no patience for cooking, then sushi is not the dish for you to try at home. This is something that I learned last weekend when my boyfriend and I decided to have a creative date night and make our own sushi. It was quite the adventure. First of all, you can’t just go to the nearest Whole Foods and buy some raw fish for your sushi. For the most part, the raw fish sold in grocery stores is not sushi grade, meaning it is not meant for raw consumption. Which is inconvenient to say the least, because that’s the main ingredient to sushi. No judgement though if you’re more of a California Roll type of person though.
Second of all, have you ever tried to cook rice meant for a sushi roll? It is labor intensive. But despite the minor setbacks here and there, this definitely made for a fun date night. To solve the fish dilemma, we went to the Main Avenue Fish Market to purchase our fish. If you have never seen this (there’s not much reason why you would have), it is definitely a different type of experience. It is right on the Potomac River. Like right on it. As in, all of the vendors are floating on docks that sway back and forth while you are trying to talk to them about the fish you want to buy. It also smells like fish, as you could imagine. It was actually really neat to walk around and see all of the fish displayed by the different vendors. It’s an art the way they organize and present their seafood products.
After we purchased the best looking tuna steak we could find, we went back and started on the rice. Which took over an hour. Seriously, for rice. Here’s what we used for ingredients, in case you wanted to be adventurous and make your own.
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Avocado
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Carrots
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Cucumber
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Salmon lox (it’s precooked)
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Tuna
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Rice
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Seaweed sheets
There’s so many different ways to make sushi, and that’s the fun of it. It is definitely time consuming to prep your ingredients and roll the rolls, but in the end it produces a lot of food. We ended up with way more sushi than we could possibly eat between the two of us. But really, it’s more about the experience and time you get to spend with whoever you are cooking with. It also makes you really appreciate the sushi chefs at the restaurant who create a beautiful dish out of it. After attempting it myself, I now understand how much skill it takes to make a good looking roll. Cooking together is a great bonding experience. Plus there’s a lot less pressure of messing up since you won’t get fired if you do. So if you’re looking for something new to do this weekend, why not make your own favorite meal?
Here’s a picture of our sushi masterpeice: