Roll Your Own: A DIY guide to making fresh sushi in Calgary

Of all the fast food, sushi is the snack that best fits fast-paced Calgary. It’s grab-and-go food, fresh, healthy and even stylish, which may be why the sushi bar has become as popular as the burger joint for refueling here, whether you’re in a downtown office tower or a suburban mall.

Learning to make your own maki, or slice your own sashimi, at home is the logical next step.
Sushi does require some specialized ingredients, but it’s really quite easy to make. Here’s a primer on where to find everything you’ll need to stock your pantry for an authentic sushi party, right here in Cowtown.

THE FOOD

Sushi is a simple Asian snack — short-grain Japanese rice, seasoned with sweet rice vinegar that’s molded into oval balls, or wrapped like a jelly roll in thin sheets of nori (seaweed) with raw or cooked fish, vegetables and spicy wasabi.

The rolls are called maki sushi, the individual pieces are known as nigiri sushi, and the delicate slices of raw salmon, ruby red tuna, tender sea scallops and other fish are collectively called sashimi. Futo-maki are large rolls, often filled with pickled vegetables and egg; hosomaki are thin rolls, with a single filling like a strip of cucumber or some chopped raw tuna. Gunkan-maki are individual pieces, wrapped in a belt of nori to keep soft toppings like sea urchin or fish roe with mayonnaise enclosed. Temaki are hand rolls or cones, filled with rice, fish and other toppings, while inari is a sweet pouch of deep-fried tofu filled with seasoned rice.

Invented in the late 1700s, sushi was the original Japanese fast food, designed to be eaten quickly from your hand, at a roadside stand, which may be exactly why it’s so popular in today’s fast-paced world.

Modern western innovations include B.C. rolls (with crispy salmon skin and cucumber), Dynamite rolls (with tempura shrimp) and California rolls (with cucumber, avocado and crab).

While basic sushi rolls are simple to make once you learn the technique, there’s no substitute for authentic, and incredibly fresh, ingredients.

To make sushi you must have the right kind of Japanese rice and rice vinegar, sheets of roasted seaweed for rolling, wasabi for flavoring and top quality fish, the kind you can eat raw with confidence.

The Japanese are serious about fish and sushi chefs are trained to choose only the best quality, so if you’re making sushi, you must buy “sushi grade” fish, which is often sold frozen. Salmon should always be frozen before eating raw to kill any potential parasites.

THE FIND

There are several fish shops where you can buy sushi grade fish in the city, but the most well-stocked market for Japanese ingredients is Arirang Oriental Food (1324 10 Ave. S.W., 403-228-0980).

This Korean-owned market specializes exclusively in Japanese and Korean foods, from housemade kimchi and crunchy marinated soft shell crabs, to paper-thin rib eye for sukiyaki, fresh shiso leaves and organic miso paste. You’ll find a whole aisle of soy sauce, seasoned rice vinegar, jars of toasted sesame seeds, wasabi and instant dashi broth.

There are a dozen different varieties of nori, even marinated tofu pouches and gari (sweet pickled pink ginger), freezers filled with sushi grade salmon, octopus and tuna, alongside neon yellow pickled radish, rosy flying fish roe, and big kilogram bags of imitation crab. Don’t miss the wonderfully spicy beef and kimchi dumplings in the freezer section (locally made by You Chun, Taste of Korea), an excellent addition to a sushi party meal, or the selection of Japanese tea.

A good brand of sushi rice is Kokuho Rose, though you will find many different brands of rice here, sold by the sack. There’s even brown short grain sushi rice, when you want to be extra healthy, and special, pressurized rice cookers to achieve the perfect degree of stickiness and bite, and keep the rice at the perfect temperature for rolling.

The best nori is dark green and shiny (it loses colour and browns over time), with no holes. Nori is graded (gold, silver, bronze), so you get what you pay for.

At Arirang, they sell everything you need to make sushi, including the special bamboo mats used for rolling maki sushi, plus panko crumbs for tempura, and slabs of seasoned egg pancake for futo-maki.

Another source of Japanese ingredients and sushi grade fish is T&T Supermarket (800, 999 36 St. N.E., 403-569-6888 and 1000, 9650 Harvest Hills Blvd. N.E., 403-237-6608, tnt-supermarket.com). You’ll find it in the freezers, or thawed and ready to use in the take-out counter, next to the selection of house-made sushi. They even have fresh sea urchin or uni — the foie gras of the sushi world — in the refrigerated case, along with whole filets of barbecued eel and pale pieces of raw hamachi (yellowtail tuna).

Next to the 36th Street location is Utsuwa-No-Yakata, a shop filled with beautiful imported Japanese tableware, from sushi plates and dipping bowls to lacquer bento boxes, chopstick rests and saki sets.

And if you’re really serious about becoming a sushi chef, check out the exquisite Japanese knives at Knifewear, Kevin Kent’s hamono-ya (knife shop) in Inglewood (1316 9 Ave. S.E., 403-514-0577). Sushi knives, like the long Yanagiba or shorter Kaisaiki designed to sliver sashimi, are beveled on one side only, to create the traditional tapered cuts. You’ll be amazed by the beauty and precision of these knives, blades that have morphed over centuries from Samurai swords into exquisite kitchen tools.

THE FIX

To make sushi, you first need to make the rice. Don’t even attempt to make sushi with long grain or basmati rice — you need to use short-grain sushi rice, as it’s the only kind sticky enough to mold and roll.

A rice cooker is fool-proof but you can also make it in a pot on the stove — make sure to wash and drain the rice three times in cold water, and use a 1:1.2 rice to water ratio (5 cups rice to 6 cups water). Place the cooked rice in a large bowl and toss with sweetened rice vinegar and salt to season, then roll while still slightly warm.

To roll, lay a square sheet of nori, shiny side down, on a bamboo rolling mat or flexible placemat. With wet hands, spread a layer of rice over the nori, leaving a bare strip at the top edge. Smear the rice with a line of wasabi, then fill with strips of vegetables or fish, and, holding the filling in place with your index fingers, lift the bottom edge of the mat and roll the nori and rice up and over the filling, rolling away from you to form a log. Use the mat to compress the roll and set it seam side down to seal. Slice rolls into six pieces using a wet, sharp knife and serve with extra wasabi and soy sauce for dipping (rolls can be made a few hours in advance, sealed in plastic wrap and refrigerated, but the nori will lose its crispness).

For nigiri, form a small oval ball of rice in your palm, and top with a smear of wasabi and a thin sliced of raw fish, pressing and smoothing the fish over the rice. To make a temaki cone, use half a sheet of nori, spread some rice into one corner, top with vegetables and fish and roll into a cone.

If you’re still in the experimental sushi stages, both of these Asian grocers offer decent take-out sushi. At Arirang, it’s a colourful Korean-style roll with batons of fresh carrot, pickled burdock and daikon radish, steamed spinach and imitation crab, a unique take on the oversized Futo-Maki roll you’ll see on sushi bar menus.

At T&T supermarket, there are various rolls and nigiri pieces ready to go, from saucy grilled eel to silky raw salmon, spicy tuna rolls, cucumber rolls, and California rolls, all conveniently packaged with wasabi, soy sauce and pickled ginger on the side. There’s no need to eat raw fish to enjoy sushi ­— lots of rolls are strictly vegetarian or include cooked fish like crab sticks and tempura shrimp.

So for a party, a picnic, or a portable snack, serve sushi.