I carried out my Valentine’s Day plan of making sushi for the first time. Both my husband and I love sushi, so that was one of my contributions to our Valentine’s Day’s date.

That afternoon I went online, checked out the key ingredients required for basic sushi preparation and left for my hunting, aka grocery store. To my luck, the sushi guy, from whom I was supposed to purchase the sushi-grade fish, was on the break and was due to be back in 20 minutes. So there I was waiting on the sushi guy and staring at already prepared and prepackaged perfectly good sushi.  A thought ran through my mind, maybe I should take a shortcut and buy the premade sushi? Certainly it would be easier, I wouldn’t have to mess with cooking the rice, buying seaweed, rice vinegar…, wrapping it all together. But then what fun would it be?

So I decided to wait. In the meantime I picked up a jar of short grain rice, which wasn’t cheap.  I payed over seven dollars for 2 pounds of it, it’s just rice for god’s sake! I got a tube of wasabi sauce, jar of pickled ginger, rice vinegar and seaweed.  To my surprise seaweed is quite cheap, I payed $1.89 for 20 sheets of it, which is good for 20 sushi rolls.

As for the sushi-grade fish, it ain’t cheap! Tuna goes for $29 per pound and salmon for $19. So I bought a third of a pound of each and it cost me roughly $16. My total for the sushi ingredients was around thirty dollars. On the bright side though next time I make sushi, I will only need to buy the fish. The rest will last me for a while.

As I got home, I realized that I didn’t have the sushi rolling mat. I got creative and used bamboo place mat with plastic wrap instead. I found the process of making sushi fairly easy. Though, I think it would have been easier to use the actual sushi rolling mat.

As you can see on the picture, visually it wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it tasted great! We could definitely taste the difference between the store-bought and the homemade sushi. Homemade tasted more plain and fresher. I got lot’s of compliments from my Valentine. By the way, what you see on the picture is about half of what I made. On the plate next to it, there were two more rolls and couple of pieces of sashimi.

In the end, was making our own sushi worth the hassle? Absolutely! I’m looking forward to the next time!