Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Sushi 101

I tried making sushi again. Refreshing my memory with tips and recipes from the Education Center at the Food Service Warehouse site.

Instead of making sushi rice from scratch (always a daunting task for me!) I cheated a little and used some leftover brown rice I had. Just added sushi vinegar to it and it was acceptable. Not easy to work with but I thought it tasted great.

I also tried shrimp and vegetable tempura. Super yum. Joe really enjoyed it.

My mis en pas. All the ingredients ready to go.

Prepping the brown rice. Using a wooden rice spoon and wooden bowl helps absorb excess moisture from the rice.

California roll ready to be rolled on the sushi mat.
I used crab with a "k". My apologies. But fresh crab isn't in our budget!

California roll.

Tempura batter and panko crumbs ready. I read once that the chef at Nobu suggests making the batter as cold as you can so that your tempura is light and crispy. Martha Stewart actually adds ice cubes into her batter. 

The batter recipe was basically:
- 1 cup all purpose flour
-1 egg
- 1.5 cups ice cold water
- 1 tsp Baking soda
After dipping the shrimp/veggies in the batter, I then rolled it in panko.
The panko adds an extra crunch that I love.

Shrimp cleaned and deveined and veggies ready to go. I try to use vegetables that will hold up to frying.

Temperature of the oil is important. You don't want it too hot and burn everything before it has a chance to cook through and you don't want it too cool so that the tempura becomes greasy. 340F- 360F is a good temp. Remember that the oil temp will drop once the food is added to the oil, so keep the thermometer handy so that you can gauge the oil temp.
I love my "spider" spoon. Great for skimming and fishing out food from hot oil. Fry the veggies first then the shrimp. That way your oil isn't fishy, making the veggies fishy.

Shrimp tempura rolls. My favorite maki roll!

Tempura ready to eat. SO good. 
I used a store bought tempura dipping sauce and it was very tasty. So much easier than making from scratch.

1 comment:

mr. pineapple man said...

i think ur suppose to make california rolls with the imitation crab meats! no problem! looking good~