Enjoy with Easy Temari Sushi

Enjoy making Temari Sushi so simple because it’s so easy, cute, and a little bit fancy.

Temari-zushi (or Temari-sushi) is a small ball-like sushi. (“temari” means “hand-ball”) It’s not really a seasonal food, but you can see a lot of temari-zushi in spring, around girl’s day (March 3rd) in Japan because temari-zushi is very colorful.

If you can’t find fish fresh enough to eat it raw, no need to be sad. You can use scrambled eggs, avocado, or shrimp, as shown below.

[How to make temari-zushi]
- salmon, tuna, shrimp, egg, avocado, etc…
- sushi rice

1. Make sushi rice! (see “How to make rice for sushi”) You have to use sushi rice for temari-zushi even if you aren’t using raw fish. Plain rice with food on top might taste very bland.

2. Put whatever you want on plastic wrap, put a little bit of sushi rice over, twist and close on the top and make a ball. That’s it!

Such as…

[Salmon]

Not the prettiest looking sashimi but once it's wrapped no one can tell.

[Tuna]

[Shrimp]

If you have shrimp prepared for sushi (see “How to prepare shrimp for sushi”)…

This is the other way to do it. You can make a small rice ball and put it on. It'll make it easier to make all temari-zushi the same size.

If you have regular curled up shrimp…

Slice the shrimp in the center

[Egg]

You can just make it with scrambled eggs.

Or if you have a little more time, you can make an egg sheet (see “How to make an egg sheet”), and cut it into strips.

[Avocado]

[Fish and avocado]

And you have plain temari-zushi! The one on a black plate was actually from a while ago. I was in a rush and didn’t really decorate them at the time.

But if you can, spend 5 minutes to put different kind of toppings on it to decorate it. You can put pretty much anything on it. It’s such a little amount you won’t really taste the topping that much, but it’ll make ordinary temari-zushi look like something you’ll see at a fancy restaurant. I used scallion and black lumpfish roe I got from IKEA but you can put seaweed cut out with a hole punch (or craft hold punch), carrot flower (see “How to make vegetable flowers”), a leaf of parsley, thinly sliced lemon, or even a tiny bit of wasabi or mustard or grated ginger! Using as many colors as you can.

For this plate, I mixed decorated ones and non-decorated ones.

Carrot flower as a topping, in Totoro temari-zushi bento

The key to make a pretty temari-zushi is to make it small and let the food cover the most of rice. Use just enough rice so that if you see it from the top, you won’t see the rice. Also try making each ball the same size. I’ve seen some very cute arrangements of temari-zushi, like have an egg temari-zushi in the middle, and surround it with salmon or tuna so the whole thing will look like a flower. I’d still dip it into soy sauce when I eat it, but if the rice is well seasoned (with vinegar), you won’t even need soy sauce

Halloween Salmon Temari Sushi

Happy Halloween!
If you are throwing a halloween party, either for the kids, or with your own friends, getting the food prepared is the first step to having a great evening. We made these amazing temari sushi balls and decorated them to look like halloween pumpkins, a perfect snack for your halloween party!

Temari sushi is a variety of sushi originating from Kyoto where circular balls of rice are laid with a topping of fish. Very similar to nigiri sushi, but shaped after temari balls, a traditional Japanese handcrafted item made from thread embroidered into patterned balls.

These temari sushi are made with salmon which gives them a just the right pumpkin look for halloween. Of course, you can make lots of other scary shapes to terrify your guests… and we guarantee that they will come back for more! :)

Ingredients

• • Japanese Rice
  • Sushi Vinegar – 1 Tbsp for 250g of Cooked Rice
  • Nori Seaweed
  • Wasabi Paste
  • Edamame
  • Soy Sauce – optional
  • Pickled Sushi Ginger – optional
  • Smoked Salmon
  • Plastic Wrap

How to prepare

• Before we make temari sushi, we need to prepare the sushi rice that will be used. You can follow ouronline rice recipe to find out how to make perfect sticky Japanese rice and then how to add sushi vinegar to turn that into sushi rice.
  If you really don’t want to spend too much time with rice preparation, you can try our microwaveable rice. Just mix one packet of cooked rice with 4 tablespoons of sushi rice vinegar.
• Once the rice is cooked, grab a sheet of plastic wrap and place a few thin slices of salmon in the centre. Then add a tablespoon of cold rice on the salmon and pull the wrap tight by twisting it to turn the rice in a ball.
• For the final touch, decorate your salmon with nori seaweed cut into halloween shapes such as jack o’ lanterns, witch’s hat, spiders or anything else suitable for halloween. We used an edamame bean for the stalk, but you can use wasabi for a similar effect!

Tips and information

• If you don’t like fish, you can use ingredients such as avocado or tamagoyaki omelette to decorate your temari sushi instead.
• Try and keep your hands a little wet so the rice won’t stick.
• Use your imagination to create scary nori seaweed halloween shapes. To make a spider, just cut a round piece of nori and draw the legs with some wasabi paste.