Easy Ehoumaki (Makizushi for Setsubun)
Ehoumak is a type of futomaki that you leave uncut. It is eaten for Setsubun. Choose whatever fillings you like. If you have a big enough rice cooker, you can also double this recipe to use up an entire 10-pack of seaweed.
Servings: 5 rolls
Equipment
- 1 bamboo sushi rolling mat
Ingredients
Sushi Rice
- 2 cups Japanese short grain rice
- water to cook rice
- 1/4 cup rice vinegar
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 pinch salt
Ehoumaki
- 5 large sheets seaweed
- 1 batch sushi rice (see above)
- 2 eggs
- 5 sticks kani kamaboko or large kamaboko cut into slices
- 1/4 log takuan cut into 1 cm thick slices
- 3 oz baby spinach about half a bag
- 1/2 carrot cut into matchsticks
- 1/2 cucumber cut into matchsticks
- 1/2 avocado cut into slices
- sesame oil
Instructions
Sushi Rice
- Cook 2 cups Japanese rice in your rice cooker
- While rice is cooking, heat up rice vinegar, sugar, and salt in a saucepan on the stove until the sugar is dissolved.
- When the rice is done, pour the rice vinegar solution over your rice and gently mix. Allow sushi rice to cool slightly.
Prep your fillings
- Bring a pot of water to boil. Blanch the baby spinach for 1 minute.
- Drain and rinse baby spinach in cold water. When cool enough to handle, squeeze excess water out of spinach and drizzle with a little sesame oil.
- Lightly beat two eggs in a bowl. Cook in a skillet on the stovetop as one thin layer, like a thin omelette.
- Let omelette cool and slice into strips.
- Slice vegetables (such as carrots and cucumbers) to matchstick size.
- Slice avocado, kamaboko, and takuan (if using) to logs about 1 cm thick, depending on your preference.
To Assemble Ehoumaki
- Place one sheet of seaweed, shiny side down, on your bamboo sushi rolling mat.
- Gently spread a thin layer of sushi rice on top, leaving about the top inch of seaweed empty.
- Place a thin layer of avocado (or other filling) on top of the rice along the bottom edge of the sushi mat.
- Continue layering your filling in very small amounts, placing them on top of each other. Your fillings should not take up more than 1-1.5 inches of space on your sushi mat.
- Roll your sushi, starting from the edge with the fillings. I find it helps to put my thumbs under the bamboo mat with the rest of my fingers holding my fillings in place for that initial roll.
- Gently squeeze the bamboo mat into a cylinder shape as you roll along.
- Repeat with the remaining seaweed sheets and sushi fillings, and serve the ehoumaki uncut. Leftover sushi filling can be kept in the refrigerator, but sushi rice does not save well.
Notes
See blog post for more filling ideas.
If you have a big enough rice cooker, you can double this recipe to use up all 10 sheets of seaweed in a pack.
Prepping the vegetables takes the most time for this recipe, but you can also do that a day ahead and keep them in the fridge.