Rhinestic's Knick Knacks

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Daiso Maniac Saturday: #11 Maki Sushi Maker

Sushi fans will know that a bamboo mat is needed to make maki sushi and it can get quite messy. (Found a tip from a youtube food channel though. Remember to check out my Youtube Treasure tomorrow!) And as most Daiso fans already know, Daiso seems to have any tool to make life easier to make your own bento, including the maki sushi maker!


The maki sushi  maker comes with these components:

From left: The main container, the bottom that fits into the main container, and the lid (presser).

As with all other food tools that you buy, please pre-wash the maker on the first use. (Not that you need reminders... I'm just reiterating what's written on the maker package.. hahaha)

To try out the maker, I decided to use whatever I had in my kitchen, well, except for the Japanese cucumber which I got last minute from a convenience store near my house.. =P And so, I prepared some fillings and the sushi rice.


For my fillings, I first made an egg roll and boiled one chicken sausage. I then cut the Japanese cucumber, egg roll and chicken sausage into strips. If possible, try not to make your strips too thick. Under 1cm would be perfect.

I wasn't too sure how much rice was needed for 1 maki sushi, so I kinda played trial and error. My rice cooker came with its own measuring cup. And so, I measured 3/4 cup of raw Japanese rice, 1.5 cups of water and cooked my rice using my rice cooker. The final amount was a little barely enough for 1 maki sushi, so I'd recommend cooking a little bit more rice.

To make sushi rice, I used this sushi vinegar powder mix and all I had to do was mixing the right amount of powder mix to the cooked rice using a rice paddle. Easy peasy!

To start making your sushi, first wet all the components of the maker. This is to prevent the rice from sticking to them. Then, place the bottom piece into the main container, with the concave side (U-side) facing upwards. Scoop and spread some rice into the container, until it fills up to just below the rim of the bottom piece. (I should have taken a photo of this step... )

Next is the placement of the fillings. If any of your strips are not long enough to cover the length of the container, cut up extra strips to fill up the remaining length. And so, my first layer was the chicken sausage. As I placed the strips down, I pressed them against the rice so that they were covered by the rice a little. My next layer was the egg and the cucumbers. I placed (and pressed) the strips side by side (refer to my photo below) while making sure they were not touching the long sides of the container. This ensures that the fillings are "encapsulated" by the rice.

I should have cut off that overlapping strip of egg roll...

I then filled the container with the remaining rice. Do make sure the edges of the long sides are filled with rice.

You can tell I didn't have enough rice...

Next, I placed the lid...


And pressed hard!


The next part was the fun part. Seeing how the sushi turned out. Hahaha.. I knew mine wouldn't turn out pretty. But before that, I prepared a piece of sushi nori (Japanese seaweed).


I removed the lid from the container, flipped the container onto the nori and gently removed the outer main container.


A little bit of a mis-aim.. Hahhaha.. The next part is pretty obvious, to remove the remaining piece from the rice before rolling the seaweed. There are 2 prongs on the bottom piece which you can press to push the rice out.

What a big hole! =.=

Once the rice was out, I rolled and wrapped the seaweed round the sushi.


I then sliced the maki sushi into bite-sized pieces. One tip to prevent rice from sticking to the blade of the knife is to wet the blade each time before slicing.

1 comment :

Mihai P said...

Awesome review, for a little neat gadget. Thank you very much.

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