Accidentally stumbled upon this sub, cheap food is my craft
Did you buy it? Did you make it? If so, can you provide us with instructions?
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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CheapHealthyFood
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Sushi is super easy to make, but you need to practice around 5 kilos so they look really good and taste not like home made
I'm an expat living in Vietnam, so the prices will be local (the seafood is not really cheap here, especially not near the sea as i am)
Rice Japonica, try to find the cheapest sold in big bags, never buy anything "for sushi" (because it's the same thing, you just pay more for word "sushi" on it)
Fish, i could even drop the price of my sushi to $1-$2 per kilo by buying salmon cuttings(soup parts) and cut all the meat stuff. i used to do like that, but this time i got the expensive filet for $16 per kilo, but if you mix with crab sticks and veggies, 100-150g of this would be fine
Crab sticks, i hope you don't need a guide on this, they are cheap
Also, i'm making my own cheese(and it is cheap), so i used it in the recipe. I buy a liter of milk for $1.2 and make 1/6 of a liter from it (1kg of cream cheese from 6 liters for $7.2)
Nori, this is the seaweed sheets, not much choice just buy some
Any not smelling vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, ginger, wasabi, and what else you get at the local sushi rich people place. Also, it would be cool to have the bamboo "rolling carpet"
Now the recipe
This is actually stupid simple, we make a kilogram in under an hour including boiling rice
First you boil the rice with less water than usually, and while it's cooking
you need to make sushi vinegar, supermarkets will try to sell you "premium sushi vinegar", but sushi vinegar is just rice vinegar+sugar. And don't let the words "rice vinegar" fool you, rice vinegar doesn't have smell or specific taste. So just get the vinegar that doesn't taste and smell, the cheapest one
Mix like a half a cup of vinegar with a little less sugar (i boil it, maybe no need. But if you boil it, put it in the ice bath to cool it down)
After that, start cutting the fish, veggies, crab sticks, roll cheese
The rice is ready, dump the sushi vinegar there, mix, and put it in the ice bath(maybe after a few minutes)
Ok, the time is around 35-40minutes, all the ingredients are ready, the rice can be hot, warm, but it better be cool
And then you roll the sushi, the exact technique depends on what sushi you want to make, but in general it's very simple and takes like 2 minutes to roll one
You put the seaweed, put the rice on 4/5th of it, trample it a bit, then put the stuff near one of the rice-full edges, and then you roll it into a sausage
If you want to make the inside-out one, you will need to flip it, and probably use a platic bag between the rice and the "rolling carpet" (yes, for this you need it for sure)
Then wait some like 5 minutes for the rolls to unify/solidify a little bit
And then cut it with a WET knife
PROFIT
This was our second time. I'd like to say that now it's eadier and better. But tbh it was easy and good from the first try
Mmm looks good but try adding less rice. Needs to be like 1-2 grains thick. It's a binder/filler not the whole meal. Damn good though for your first shot. I remember mine being just t-total shit.
Also see if you can get some shoyu (Japanese soy sauce, basically old school way of doing it). Aged stuff is magical with sushi.
About the soy sauce, i have many different kinds of different sauces, i mean like different soy sauces, different oyster sauces, fish, etc (they are very common and cheap in vietnam). So i probably wouldn't be surprised much by it 😅 i mean, i live in a country where the pasta or chocolate island is 10 times smaller than just the fish sauce department, and 10 more for soy sauce
About the rice, first, it's not easy to make it thin, i started making thinner, but don't think i can really make it thinner (the tutorial photos are old compared to the one in the post)
And the second one is price, rice costs like $1 per kilo, and with water it weights more. But fish costs 16 times more than that. So i were to add more fish this post would be called not "$4 or less sushi", but $8, etc
I really like the idea that i can make budget sushi that cost like a bowl of the cheapest soup, without really budgeting
All good, for the rice issue, if you ever want to try and make it thinner, I use basically a smear method, make a small stick of rice and then spread it like mayo. Using the tips of your fingers. Also I use half sheets vs full sheets.
Imitation crab? That would do it.
Real fish? Work on a dock, gather the cast offs
Just include the weight of the plate.
Hahaha, true there! Or dye some rice pink and put it in the middle. Everything's expensive these days.