the porter roll.

as you may know, i am half japanese. my husband justin served an LDS mission in thailand. i think it's a huge blessing that he did, because we can enjoy delicious asian foods together! one of our favorites is sushi. mmmmmmm. however, it can get pretty exxxpensive if you go out for it a lot! i made sushi for the very first time a couple weeks after we got married, and it's been a regular menu item ever since. i think i've made it 4 or 5 times now. i thought i'd share how we do soosh... i dubbed this, "the porter roll".

one of the most glorious things about sushi is that it's all about you. YOU get to choose what you want in it! sushi doesn't necessarily mean raw fish- in japanese, it means "vinegared rice". people get scared by raw fish and judge sushi so quickly - if only they'd give GOOD sushi a chance! haha. you don't even need fish in your sushi if you don't want it! this is what i usually put in ours:

ingredients:
+vinegared rice
+egg
+imitation crab
+cucumber
+smoked salmon
+cream cheese (not pictured)
+seaweed paper

step 1 is definitely the rice. my parents gave me a rice cooker when i moved out, and i love it. it makes awesome rice. my mom was also sweet enough to send me a big fatty sack of good, asian rice. add a little bit of rice vinegar to the rice, and mix.

next comes the egg. it's nothing fancy, really, just adds more to the sushi. i usually mix two eggs and a bit of milk in a bowl, then fry it on medium-low heat.

i know it looks like a yellow beached whale, but hey it doesn't really matter what it looks like at this point haha. i like to gather it in a line, since you have to slice it up.

this just makes it easier to layer!

step three is to place your seaweed paper on a bamboo roller- i'm not exactly where they sell these... but i'm sure it's somewhere. again, my mama gave me this. heheh. it just makes rolling the sushi easier. it doesn't matter what order you put it on, but here you can see i did cucumber, imitation crab, smoked salmon, egg, and cream cheese.

next... roll er up!! as you can see, the bamboo roller makes it much easier to roll up into that perfect cylinder of amazingness.

after that, all you need to do is slice em up!! here there are six pieces. there were eight, but i didn't include the end pieces in this picture since they're not as pretty haha.

this is what 4 or 5 rolls of sushi cut up looks like (i honestly lost track). i don't think we even got through half of it... which is fine. because that means i don't have to cook the next day;) oh so dericious.

one last thing! our local Smith's food & drug store sells these sushi sauces - "eel sauce" and "spicy sauce". THEY ARE SO GOOD ON SUSHI. don't be scared by eel sauce- it's like a sweeter, thicker version of soy sauce. i actually like this more than soy sauce. the spicy sauce adds that perfect kick to the sushi.

sushi is so interchangable- if you really don't like imitation crab or smoked salmon, try canned tuna. my mom will make it with canned tuna at times, and it's pretty good. or even just replace the fish with more veggies. heck, use bacon for all i care! some restaurants deep fry their sushi- i have yet to master this technique (epic fail last time i tried).

anyways, i hope this helped you sushi lovers to want to try to make your own sometime! it's sooo easy and yummy.

thanks for reading!