Hosomaki sushi with fish or vegetables

Hosomaki sushi with fish or vegetables. Versione italiana. Lately I’ve been trying my hand at various versions of homemade sushi and I must say that, although it takes quite a long time to prepare, in the end the results are really satisfying. Furthermore, every time you try again, you acquire manual skills and the result is both better and faster. Today I propose one of the most traditional sushi dishes, namely hosomaki. They are made from half a sheet of seaweed, sushi rice and fish or vegetables. I love preparing them with tuna and raw salmon and then some vegetables like cucumber or carrot. They also lend themselves very well to vegetarian or vegan variants. In the latter case, in addition to the vegetables I have indicated, you can use omelette, philadelphia, avocado, mango, steamed pumpkin, canned or fresh daikon.

Tips to get a good result

To obtain excellent hosomaki the secrets, in addition to the manual skills that are acquired over time, are:

A perfect sushi rice. Find here the recipe to obtain a perfect sushi rice without rice cooker.
High quality Nori Seaweed. If you don’t like seaweed or if you just want to experiment with variations, there are also soy sheets of various colors, I sincerely prefer seaweed, but I like them. Otherwise I have also seen variants of rolls wrapped in a thin sheet of cucumber cut with a knife, or from a cabbage leaf. But in these cases the taste changes quite a bit compared to the original version.
Excellent downed fish. We often read around that it is also possible to freeze fish in the home freezer for 96 hours, which is equivalent to chilling it in terms of food safety, but the result in terms of consistency and taste is no longer the same.
Have good tools at your disposal:
- Sushi kit with bamboo placemat and scoop to arrange the rice
- A good sharp knife. Usually Yanagiba knives are used for sushi / sashimi. Otherwise, I am also fine with well-sharpened butcher knives.

Hosomaki sushi with fish or vegetables

Ingredients: (8 rolls, 8 pieces of sushi each)

250g raw sushi rice
4 nori seaweed
50g salmon for sashimi
50g tuna for sashimi
1/2 carrot
1/2 cucumber
Soy sauce (optional)
Wasabi (optional)

Directions (ingredients preparation):

To prepare sushi rice, follow this recipe, adapting the doses to 250g of rice, or preparing twice as many rolls.
Then move on to prepare the other ingredients, cutting both the fish and the vegetables into strips. Finer cut vegetables, especially carrots which tend to be a little tough. Rather then you could place 2 or 3 side by side within the roll. When you take the fish out of the package, it will probably be moist on the surface. In this case, dab it with absorbent paper before cutting and using it.
Then roll out the bamboo placemat, cover it with cling film and then place half of the seaweed on top of it. You can get half the seaweed from the whole seaweed by folding it in half along the longer side. Fold it a few times back and forth and then it should be easy enough to divide with your hands, as you usually do with sheets of paper, when you don’t have scissors.
Place the shinier side of the seaweed down so that it stays on the outside. Then wet your hands in slightly acidulated water, lightly dab your fingertips on a cloth, if they are dripping, and then take a portion of rice of about 70 grams.

Directions (Hosomaki sushi with fish or vegetables):

Arrange the rice on the seaweed about 1cm from the edge that is towards you and form a cylinder that reaches well up to the side ends. Then make a groove with your fingertips in the middle of the cylinder, where you will place the fillings. I found several recipes in which it was said to “spread” the rice on the surface of the seaweed, but in this case I could hardly ever get the filling to stay in the center of the roll.
Then place the strips of filling in the groove (carrot or cucumber for the vegetarian ones, salmon or tuna for the others). Then move on to roll your hosomaki with the help of the mat, pressing with your fingertips on the filling to help you roll.
Make a complete turn so that the seaweed comes to close on itself and then press a little more with your hands on the mat in order to compact the roll and make it well cylindrical. Prepare all the hosomaki before moving on to the cut.
When you cut them, the knife must be very sharp and moistened with the acidulated water each time before cutting. If there are traces of rice on the blade, they must be removed and the blade wet again. Cut the roll first in half, then in 4, and finally in 8. By doing this you will be more sure of getting uniform pieces.
You can serve with soy sauce and a hint of wasabi. If everyone likes wasabi, you can also put a bit of it with the filling when making the rolls. In fact, despite having seen many conflicting opinions about it (wasabi dissolved in soy sauce yes or no), restaurants often tend to insert wasabi directly into the rolls, temaki or nigiri.