“You can find i in some restaurants, but it’s more often eaten at home. It’s like when people come over here, we do Aussie barbecue. When people come over to your home in Japan, you do temaki sushi,” says Meg Tanaka, who owns (the cafe and design store located in Melbourne and Tokyo) with her husband Zenta.
In Japanese, “te” means “hand” and maki “roll”. This is what makes this type of sushi so easy to make at home: you can roll it with your hands in a matter of seconds, no tools needed. Unlike the most common cylinder-shaped , which require some skills to construct and is usually prepared in advance, temaki sushi is made at the table and shaped like a cone.
Meg and Zenta turn to temaki sushi for their Christmas staff dinner and their children’s birthdays. “We also do it quite often when friends come over and want to try Japanese flavours, and we want to share a bit of the Japanese experience,” says Meg. “It’s such an entertaining dish and great for bonding. It’s a similar excitement to sharing hotpot; you get to talk about what you’re eating and what combinations are good.”
Zenta agrees: “It brings people together because everyone is involved and you get to watch how everybody does it.”
A temaki sushi dinner at the Tanaka family home in Melbourne. Source: Meg Tanaka
And while it can be the perfect dish to impress guests, it’s also easy enough to be a quick weeknight meal, according to Adam Liaw, .
“It’s something we eat at home a lot. It’s my kids’ favourite food, so we have it maybe once a week. It’s very, very easy,” he says. “It’s so fast! We’re an Asian household, so we always have rice cooked anyway.”
Temaki sushi tends to be a big hit with kids. “They get to do it by themselves which is a highlight for them, and they get to choose the ingredients. It’s quite entertaining for them,” says Meg.
To prepare temaki sushi, cook short-grain Japanese rice and season it with rice vinegar, salt and sugar (or a premade rice seasoning mix). Source sashimi-grade fish from your fishmonger, which you can slice yourself or even buy already sliced. Cut vegetables like avocado and cucumber into sticks, and nori into rectangles.
It’s such an entertaining dish and great for bonding. It’s a similar excitement to sharing hotpot; you get to talk about what you’re eating and what combinations are good.
While sashimi is the most common ingredient, there are no hard rules for temaki sushi: you can use pretty much any filling you want. Liaw’s favourites are salmon belly and kingfish, while the Tanakas love sea urchin, salmon roe and eel.
You can also make , the rolled Japanese omelette, and cook chicken, or -style. If you’re serving salmon, Meg suggests keeping the skin. You can then cut it into strips, sprinkle it with salt, pepper and flour, and shallow fry until it’s crispy.
Temaki sushi can also be made vegan by loading up on vegetables, , herbs and leaves like shiso.
Lay all the ingredients on the table with soy sauce and wasabi, and you’re ready to roll!
Our three temaki sushi fans agree that it’s worth sourcing high-quality ingredients. “It’s such a simple thing, you want the ingredients to be good: good rice, good fish, good soy sauce, good wasabi, good nori,” says Liaw.
Temaki is a versatile and kid-friendly dish. Source: Destination Flavour Japan
To roll your temaki sushi, take a rectangular piece of nori, add a little bit of rice, as well as the filling of your choice, and roll into a cone.
“The trick is not to put too much rice so you can roll it. Too much rice and you can’t roll it, it falls apart,” explains Zenta Tanaka. “And that way, you also get to eat a lot more different ones!”
Let the good times roll
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