How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Tips for Making Homemade Sushi Rolls

Many people consider sushi to be a luxury item, but it is actually really easy to make your own sushi at home with common ingredients. The hardest part of making sushi at home is getting your rolls to look right; they should be tight, evenly distributed, and hold together on their own.

How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Get a Sushi Mat

One of the main keys to rolling sushi is to get an actual sushi mat instead of improvising with wax paper or a cloth placemat. Your sushi mat will give you a lot of control over the sushi as you roll it together, and it will also allow you to press the roll together tightly enough to keep it from falling apart. Most importantly, your sushi rolls will end up round instead of oval or oblong.

How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Make Sticky Sushi Rice

Your sushi rice needs to be nice and sticky to get perfect sushi, so just cooking a pot of rice isn't going to cut it. Ideally, your sushi rice should be short grain Japanese rice, cooked to a moist consistency, although in a pinch, you can use any variety of rice in its place. Then mix in a combination of sugar and rice wine vinegar, and stir it to coat the rice. Spread the rice out and fan it off until it is no longer hot to the touch before making sushi rolls.

How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Cut Ingredients to Width of Roll

When you lay out your sheet of nori for your sushi roll, you will want all of your ingredients to be exactly the width of the sheet. This means that your carrot sticks, cucumber spears, avocado slices, and fish or crab meat should all be either the width of the sheet or half the width of the sheet.

How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Spread an Even Layer of Rice

The place where many people falter in rolling perfect sushi is that their rice layer is not even. You want to cover all of the nori (all the way to the edges) in a layer of rice that is a consistent depth, aside from the top inch or two of the nori, which you will leave completely clean to help seal the roll when it is done.

How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Arrange Ingredients Precisely

After you have spread your sushi rice on the nori, arrange your ingredients that are going inside the roll. They should be laid across the roll about 1 inch from the bottom, and each ingredient should stretch uniformly from one side to the other.

How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Roll and Seal

This is the step that takes a little bit of practice, but learning to do it right will significantly improve the look of your sushi. Starting from the bottom of the bamboo sushi mat, pick it up a little and roll it upward, pulling the mat out from the nori when you reach the point where it would get rolled into the sushi roll. Dab some water all the way across your exposed inch or two of nori at the top so that it will seal to itself. Once the roll is complete, give it a few tight squeezes with the bamboo sushi mat still around it.

How to Roll Perfect Sushi: Slice

Lastly, you will need to slice your sushi roll. The best knife is one that is sharp, nonstick, and has airflow opportunities (so, either a sushi knife with holes in the blade or a santoku knife with dimples will be best). You can cut off the very ends if they are ugly, although if you do things right, they should be just as clean as the rest of the pieces. Then slice the rest in one inch wide pieces, arranging them on a plate so you can see all of the delicious fillings inside!