welcome to the cutting board I'm happy to have Esther divided back with us last time Astros with us she showed us how to make really bold Italian flavor dishes with really simple ingredients today we're going to talk about a vehicle food from the other side of the world Esther is taking us to Asia today and we are making sushi rolls what are we gonna start with today so the most important thing in sushi as everyone knows is rice you can't really have a sushi without rice so what we're gonna begin with is our rice and how to process it how to make it sticky and how to make it the right kind of rice because this isn't gonna be the kind of rice that you idiot with a regular dish this is special that's awesome exactly okay okay so one of the most important things about sushi rice is the fact that it's sticky and how you get it sticky one thing is the type of rice you're using so this is short grain rice and the second thing is you rinse it like crazy so we're gonna start by rinsing two cups of rice have two cups here and we're gonna go under room-temperature water this isn't it's not a hard rule but we're gonna go into room-temperature water and as you can see here the water is really cloudy that's the starch in the rice that we're trying to get out what do the stars actually make it stick here no not in this case in this case it's the residual starch on top of the rice that we're trying to get rid of and that acts sort of like a powder that keeps it away from each other so we're just trying to get rid of that so you can see it's still cloudy this goes on let's say five minutes or until it starts running clear usually it takes it up just rinse it and it's good to agitate it because then you get all the starch out so it's starting to run a little clear now another thing that a lot of people don't really know is that there's also short grain brown rice so if you're looking for something that's not white rice work through something a little healthier there's also brown rice which is a great are you going to do the same thing with the brown rice yes but not for quite as long because the thing is brown rice isn't really even as sticky because it has less Church because it has that has time all right so the water is running clear the second step in making our sushi rice is to drain it so I'm gonna put on this little bowl and it'll drain out of my strainer and then we back in a about ten minutes and put it to cook all right so we're back and the rice has been drained I'm gonna pick it up so you can see look at all that water in there so that's the water we don't want in the rice because there's still some residual starch that leaked out with that water okay so here we have our rice but you might handing me that pot please all right so we're gonna dump our rice since this pot and the hard roll generally for making sushi rice is an equal ratio so we have two cups of rice here I'm gonna put two cups of water so here we go two cups of water yes and so we're just gonna pour that in and here's one thing that you have to know once you put the water in your rice don't touch it because if you stir it it's gonna release the starch that's inside of the rice and you just spent all that time washing it out you don't want to make no more mixing no more don't touch it okay so now that we have our rice in the pot I'm gonna put the lid and we're gonna take it to the stove it's on the stove what are we gonna do with this so we're gonna put it on medium high heat so we're gonna put it on medium high heat and actually for right now let's take the cover off and what we're gonna do is let it come to a rolling boil and as soon as it starts to boil the second and starts to boil we're gonna turn down the fire to the lowest possible setting and cover it and we're gonna let it cook for 15 minutes do not open your pot and you're letting out precious steam and it will not steam your rice after it's done cooking for 15 minutes you turn off the fire and leave it on the stove covered for another 15 minutes and then you're ready to use your ice so while that's cooking let's move back over here to the tofu since this is a vegetarian or vegan sushi sushi has fish we own eat fish what do you put instead of fish because you want to have a hearty sushi you want to have something filling and so what I found works really well and is really easy and delicious to make us tofu now I I really wouldn't want it if you just kind of put that tofu in like that that's not what okay tofu is great as a vehicle but tofu is not the star of any dish you gotta do something to it so what are you gonna do to this token okay it's the same as meat you know you can't either chunk of meat raw without any flavor is the same a tofu you have to marinate it you have to saute it you have to add some flavor to it so that's what we're gonna do the great thing about it is that it soaks up flavor like a sponge so I have here two blocks two 16-ounce blocks of tofu I'm probably going to only use one for the demonstration right now and what I'm gonna do is make a marinade and then we're gonna saute our tofu in the marinade how are we gonna make the marinade okay so I'm starting here I have four cloves of garlic and a huge chunk of ginger so I'm not gonna use all of this but this is we're gonna start with let's do a big clove of garlic and I'm just gonna grate it on the fine setting here I like to use the fresh garlic but if you don't like those little chunks and you can use garlic powder as well but I can get out the nice authentic flavor from the garlic greens the you know fresh is always better that's what I say but if you're you know running short on time or you don't have fresh garlic on hand then garlic powder works just as well so I have your one large clove of garlic and then here it's about a teaspoon and a half of sesame oil and Asian cooking you need sesame oil it has that flavor or it's delicious so that sesame oil and then here we have about five tablespoons of soy sauce we're gonna put that in here and then I'm just gonna get about two tablespoons of water if you don't mind yeah just a little bit that's good so we'll just add that and this is just a dilute that soy sauce a little bit because we as we all know soy sauce is really salty so and lastly I'm gonna grate some ginger into it so really Asian flavors we have sesame we have ginger and garlic and it's all gonna just be soaked up into our tofu how are you gonna use all that ginger I'm not I'm grating let's say about a half an inch of garlic I'm sorry of ginger I'm just grating that in there and this yeah you can really smell the spices coming through okay so now that we have this mixed what we're gonna do is go over to the stove in our saucepan alright so now we're here at the stove with our tofu already chopped I chopped it about half an inch thick and I laid it out as you can see in one layer because you don't want to have more than one with some oil on the bottom yes a little bit of oil if you're using nonstick then you don't have to use that but in this case it's not so I put a little tiny bit of oil so I have my marinade here and I'm gonna just put it over and try to coat each tofu with a little bit of marinade so here we go and it's just the right amount of marinade - okay thank you so now my toph was coated and I'm gonna turn on my stove to high okay it's not gonna burn it's not gonna burn because I'm gonna be here so I want it high I want it high at first because I'm gonna just boil it a little bit cuz boiling will really steer in that flavor and then I'm gonna lower it a little bit and just watch it for about five minutes and it'll get really firm and then we'll be ready to move on to the next stage of sushi so we're back and our rice is ready to be seasoned and our tofu is ready to be chopped so if you wouldn't mind bringing that over here so how am I gonna chop this so as you can see the veggies here they're chopped in long thin strips because we want to put in our sushi not make it too bulky and muscles but you're going for so if you could cut the tofu in strips and 1/2 the veggies that'd be great okay meanwhile the rice has just come out and what I have put on it is 5 tablespoons of rice vinegar 2 teaspoons of sugar and half a teaspoon of salt to give it some flavor and it gives it that that's a really sushi flavor so the rice is ready and we have here our nori sheets they are roasted seaweed and all our vegetables we have cucumber pepper and avocado which are my favorite feelings personally so as you can see right have a small bowl of water next to my rice this is super super important this rice is crazy sticky if I stick my hand right now would come away covered with rice so the way to avoid that when you're spreading it on your nori is to have a bowl of water and dip your fingers into it as you're grabbing and so that's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna start I'm gonna grab a nori sheet and first off I'm gonna make a sumo roll so it's gonna be a really thick roll and later I can make a smaller one and I'm gonna grab a chunk of rice let's do the other hand so you can already see even with the water it's sticking a little bit so here's I'm gonna do my spread my rice and you may have to grab a little bit more for such a big roll you want to spread it in an even layer leaving a little bit of margin at the bottom if you can see here I'm leaving about half an inch to close my roll so I'm just spreading my rice when you grab a little more this actually looks like something fun you could do with your kids like totally get their fingers into that oh absolutely I would have loved it when I was a kid except I didn't like seaweed it's grown on me now okay can I cut up this other car too as well please do I'm only gonna cut the avocado so I like my avocado paper-thin and that would be great if you can do that all right okay so I'm just spreading my nori I my rice on the nori and you can see I have a little margin here so this is ready and now that I have the tofu cut I'm gonna take a little slice in it and you can see he sliced it perfectly it's really thin that's great so I'm gonna put it not exactly in the middle but not at the top either it's a little bit it's closer towards the top I'm just gonna lay two strips there and you see it fits perfectly that's why I like the block of tofu when you cut it like that it just fits perfectly in your nori okay how's the avocado going no that's great you can stop there so we'll just I'll take a couple slices of that look at that that's beautiful okay so I'm gonna weigh the avocado a little bit ahead of the tofu perfect thank you okay and what would you like in this roll do you want cucumber pepper or anything you choose well I want both of them both all right so let's do both so I'm gonna grab some strips of cucumber and lay them on top here and a red and a yellow pepper okay so this is ready to be rolled so this is the one with the margin on that so this is gonna be the bottom so I'm gonna start rolling like this you flip over and hold your veggies tightly and you press down then you release and you go back and re roll depress down the great thing about the bamboo is that it really holds stuff together when you're doing it with your hands it's kind of Wiggly this is great for holding your sushi so release again and keep rolling now why did you put plastic wrap on there oh I should have mentioned that so the great thing about putting plastic wrap on your bamboo rolling mat is that you don't have to wash it afterwards and also the rice is really sticky so it kind of repels that a little bit so check out this roll all right how's that work definitely okay so I'm gonna cut this roll and plate it right now and then I'll show you how to make a roll with the rice on the outside it's super easy and it looks so pretty okay okay so a great way to cut your sushi so you don't have to cut and cut and cut is to cut exactly in the middle and then line it up I thought it would be a little bit harder to cut but it is super easy to cut especially when you put the rice on the nori it gets softer so it's a lot easier to cut it really binds so you cut it in half you cut it in half again and then you cut again so I made a sumo roll this time it's a really big roll and let me just show you how this looks on the inside it's gorgeous check that out perfect I actually like the red ones that pop of color you eat with your eyes - exactly so let's just put this here on the plate right now and then I'll show you how to get on with the next row that's perfect you've got a great dish got your carbs you've got your protein and it's delicious and it's delicious all right I'm just gonna wash my hands to get rid of that rice you may have to wash your hands every once in a while so you don't have a bunch of rice floating in your water bowl okay let me get you a disco yes thank you here wipe your hands okay so one more roll and I'm gonna show you how to do the rice on the outside so you're I'm just gonna wipe this down okay so now if you could hand me the rice please so I'm gonna wet my hand again and grab a chunk of rice and just lay it down here and this time I'm not gonna need a margin because the rest will be on the outside so I'm gonna spread it and you want to go all the way to the edge and this time on the other one it's okay if you have maybe a little gap and you can see the nori through the rice but this time you want to cover your nori completely because the rice is the outside exactly so you really want to slip pretty and in this case the nori is for flavor not necessarily for the binding yes pretty much it does bind the vegetables inside but it is for flavor and also for color when you cut it has that beautiful spiral okay so check that out it's pretty much completely covered and sticky oh I'm so sticky okay so what I'm gonna do for this one is I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna flip it and now you do the exact same thing you did with the other sushi except you it's clearly sticky I mean she flipped it it didn't Olaf all opposed it off all right check this out okay so I'm gonna go again with my tofu in the same place it's towards the top but a little more off-center and I have my tofu and then I'm gonna do avocado this time I'm gonna do just avvocato and cucumber because that's my favorite all right so now let's roll again so again I'm gonna turn it this way so you can see how it goes I'm gonna roll it holding my stuff tightly till the bamboo touches the nori then I hold it tight and I let go now I'm gonna re-roll hold it tight release re-roll again and hold it tight and now let's see how it looks check that out Wow with our rice on the outside okay so let's cut this one and then we're ready to try our sushi it's a cutting technique gonna be about the same yes you can watch your knife for this one since the rice is on the outside so let's cut this I'm just gonna cut off this time because it's a little loose all right so let's cut in the middle again see how the rice is sticking a little bit this is why you want to wet your knife perfect and it is ready at this sushi are perfect they look perfect you've made them exactly looking authentic they're also nutritious we've got everything that we need for a really good healthy meal absolutely in this I do have a sushi problem there is a problem with this dish and that is that because their size I am not careful and I overeat them Oh No so I'm really glad that she's portion controlled my plate for me is so that we won't forget this and she's gonna make me share as well definitely so let's go ahead and try these I would like to try one of these hand the PAP the red pepper thanks just and I'm sorry one of these cuz I Lakatos making it now we're gonna use a dipping sauce oh yeah absolutely you can't have sushi without dipping all right hmm if you wanted to make this recipe gluten-free you could use tamari instead of soy sauce in preparing the tofu and as a dipping mmm tamari has a little bit less salt content than soy sauce but this one here this is so good it's delicious oh yeah this is so good I'm gonna try the the one with the rice please it's got that really authentic sushi flavor that you're looking for because of the nori mm-hmm and I love how the tofu system plates a fish yeah you really don't miss it hmm I'm gonna finish this plate join us next time on the cutting board will have a different recipe for you you