How To Make Homemade Sushi

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One of my favorite things about cooking is playing with my food. Composing a salad, the perfect toast or (in this case) sushi, allows me to have fun each step of the way!  For some, making your own sushi can sound daunting, but it’s actually simple. You don’t even need a sushi mat to make it (although it helps).

In this recipe, I made a vegan sweet potato and avocado sushi roll. Sushi is versatile, so play up your favorite flavor combinations! For the gals at What We Eat, we constantly make many variations of a carrot and avocado salad. So, in light of that inspiration, here is what we came up with! 

What you’ll need:

A clean dish towel

Plastic wrap

A bowl of cold water (to help the rice not stick to your hands)

Sushi mat 

Ingredients

Nori sheets

2 cups sushi rice, cooked and cooled with a splash of seasoned rice vinegar 

Julienned Vegetables of choice (I did sweet potato, cucumber, daikon, avocado, cilantro)

Method:

  1. Place a big square of plastic wrap on top of a sushi mat and place on top of a dish towel. (The towel is there to help with the mess). Place a single piece of nori on top of the plastic.

2. With wet hands, place a decent size scoop of the rice onto the nori and press down until even thickness throughout. The water will help the sushi rice to not stick to your hands. Life hack!

3. Add vegetables of choice in a straight line about ⅓ of the way in. Sprinkle with a bit of salt and top with cilantro.

4. Now the fun part! Using the sushi mat and plastic as a guide, tightly roll the sushi. Make sure the pressure is even when you roll to help prevent lumps. (Note: Chef hands in dire need of a paraffin treatment!!)

5. Allow to sit for 10 minutes rolled in the plastic before cutting.

6. Slice sushi into 8 pieces and enjoy dipped in your favorite sauce.

With Love,

Rian

 

 

Nutrient and Caloric Density: Cracking the nutrition code for good

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If I had the eyes and ears of the world and only 10 minutes to share some of the most important concepts in nutrition, I would attempt to explain nutrient and caloric density. Horrible, horrible names but important ideas. The good news is that the devil is NOT in the details. A broad understanding is all you need to answer most nutrition-related questions.

Before we get into it, I bet these concepts are things you already get intuitively. Let’s see:

Question 1: Both the five Starbursts and medium banana below are about 100 calories. Of these two, which do you think is the healthier choice? Why?

What We Eat: Starbursts v BananaAnswer 1: If you guessed the banana, you’d be right. Clearly, there is way more good stuff (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, etc.) per calorie in the fruit than in the fruit candy. This is what is termed “nutrient density.”

Question 2: You’re trying to maintain your weight. Would one-cup granola or one-cup oatmeal be the better breakfast choice? Why?

What We Eat: Oatmeal v Granola

Answer 2: Guess oatmeal? Ding, ding, ding! Considering the same volume of oatmeal has about a third of the calories of granola, you could fill your tummy equally with less calories. This is what is termed “caloric density.”

So, Nutrient Density = the amount of good stuff  (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, etc.) in a specific food per the amount of calories it provides.

  • High nutrient density = lots of good stuff per calorie (aka “superfoods”)
  • Low nutrient density = little good stuff per calorie (aka “empty calories”)

And, Caloric Density = the amount of calories in a specific volume/weight of food.

  • High caloric density = lots of calories for small amount of food
  • Low caloric density = few calories for a large amount of food

Want to see how this should play out on your plate day-to-day?

Healthy Eating Plate
Those geniuses from Harvard think of everything.

So now, tell me and be honest, do you get it? Let me know because I am practicing for when I have those 10 minutes of the whole world’s attention.

A RD’s Meal Planning Checklist

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What We Eat: Balanced Meal

I cook a lot. I mean, A LOT. I cook four+ meals weekly for a host of clients, dinner for my husband and me nightly (always making enough for the next day’s lunch, topped with greens, whatever it is becomes a salad) and typically at least one larger, more labor-intensive dinner weekly for a crowd of friends or family. Overtime I’ve developed a mental checklist to help me plan that I thought you might find useful. These principles make sense nutritionally, but even more important, following them makes my food taste better (I think) and makes cooking it easier (I know).

  • Balance. A quarter of what I make is protein, a quarter a grain or starch, and (at least) a half non-starchy vegetables and/or fruit. Some meals – think soups, pastas, etc. – may contain all three elements mixed together, but if I separated them out, my goal is for them to still contain foods in these proportions.
  • Color. This is important to me for several reasons. We all eat with our eyes first and having a variety of colors on the plate makes the meal look more appetizing. A food’s color (if it’s natural) is also usually indicative of what vitamins and minerals it contains. More color = largest variety of vitamins and minerals at each meal.
  • Texture. When I’m planning what to cook, I make sure that the recipes I choose aren’t all one-dimensional in the texture department. More texture = more interest. For instance, topping soup with homemade croutons offers a nice contrast to soup’s smooth texture, or adding toasted nuts to a salad offers a dense crunch to a the delicate crispness of greens.
  • Simplicity. Unless I have a lot of time on my hands, I never make more than one new recipe at a time. Whatever I make to accompany a new recipe is easy enough that I can go on autopilot making it.
  • Freshness. I plan to use more perishable foods within the first few days of going to the market, and less perishable foods later in the week. This principle dictates my weekly menus. For instance, if I go to the market on Monday, my menu might look like this…
    • Monday: Fish variation
    • Tuesday: Chicken variation
    • Wednesday: Soup/pasta/vegetarian variation
    • Thursday: Egg variation (frittata, shakshuka, omelet, etc.
  • A note on richness. I love fat – oils, cheeses, butter…all of it – BUT I use fat strategically. I employ high fat foods to enhance healthy vegetables and whole grain dishes versus on dishes that are already easy to eat on their own. I.e. Yes, of course white pasta with butter and parmesan is delicious, but opting to use a little parmesan on roasted broccoli gives me more nutritional bang for my caloric buck.

What principles help guide your meal planning and prep?

“Cooking is like exercise or spending time in nature or good conversation: The more you do it, the more you like it, the better you get at it, and the more you recognize that its rewards are far greater than its efforts and that even its efforts are rewards.” – Mark Bittman