Temaki Hand Rolls
In Japan temaki is home food rather than restaurant food: a bowl of rice, a plate of fillings, a stack of nori, and everyone rolls their own at the table. There is no point making them ahead — the whole thing rests on the nori still being crisp, and that lasts about three minutes.
- Prep
- 25 min
- Total
- 25 min
- Servings
- 4
- Level
- Easy
- Per serving
- 290 kcal
Ingredients
Makes: 8 cones
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
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Step 1: Cut the fillings
Cut the salmon into finger-thick strips and the avocado and cucumber into long batons. Everything should be longer than your palm: in a cone the filling sticks out of the top, and that is how the dish looks, not a fault.
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Step 2: Set the table
Put the bowl of rice in the middle, a plate of fillings beside it and a stack of nori halves. Add a small bowl of water with a spoonful of vinegar for hands. From here everyone rolls their own, which is exactly what temaki is for.
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Step 3: Lay the rice on the diagonal
Take half a sheet of nori, rough side up, on your palm. With a wet hand put 40 g of rice on the left half and spread it diagonally — from the top left corner down to the middle of the bottom edge.
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Step 4: Add the filling
Along that same diagonal lay a lettuce leaf, a strip of fish, avocado and cucumber. No more than four things: a cone is narrower than it looks, and the filling has to stay in it rather than fall out.
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Step 5: Roll the cone
Fold the bottom left corner of the nori over the filling, then roll everything to the right, moving your hand in an arc — you get a cone, wide at the top and pointed at the bottom. Stick the end down with a couple of grains of rice instead of glue.
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Step 6: Eat it now
Temaki are not set down on a plate to wait — they are passed from hand to hand. The nori starts to soften against the rice within three minutes, and the whole point of the dish is that it snaps.
Tips & variations
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Tip
40 g of rice per cone is about two tablespoons. More will not fit: the nori buckles, the filling pushes out of the sides and the cone loses its shape.
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Variation
Temaki is the easiest way to feed everybody something different: put crab sticks, a spicy mixture, tamago, cucumber and avocado on the table and let each person build their own. Crab stick and cucumber works well for children.
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Swap
Anything already cooked will do in place of salmon: a boiled prawn, smoked mackerel, tinned tuna mixed with a spoon of mayonnaise. Temaki has no need of raw fish.
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Storage
Temaki do not keep at all — they are made at the table and eaten within a minute. The filling and rice can be ready half an hour ahead; the nori comes out of the packet at the last moment.
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Tip
The nori has to be dry and crisp. If a sheet has gone soft, hold it a hand's width above a lit burner for about ten seconds and it turns brittle and darker again.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 4 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 290 kcal | 1,160 kcal |
| Protein | 13 g | 52 g |
| Fat | 9 g | 36 g |
| Carbohydrates | 38 g | 152 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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