Eat Sushi. Save Money. Be Happy.

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I love going out to eat sushi. Like, a lot. I used to live in Las Vegas, land of the all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant. And no, it wasn’t crappy sushi. This was really good sushi prepared when you ordered it.

I love sushi so much that I was going to one of these restaurants at least once a month, often twice a month. And I ate a lot of sushi. A lot. Too much. It was not uncommon for me to eat 3-4 full rolls, plus nigiri, plus 2-3 mini appetizers, plus dessert. You have to get your money’s worth at these places, right?

While the price was good for the amount of food I was eating, it added up. I was looking at $35-$40 per meal after tax and tip. I was easily spending over $500 per year just on sushi!

At my current duty location, there is only one all-you-can-eat place. It’s okay, but not great. And it’s far from my house. Naturally, I haven’t gone there very often.

To get my sushi fix, I’ve been going to some of the regular sushi places near me. It’s decent sushi, but at $8-$13 per roll this is an expensive habit. I’ve been treating myself to one or two rolls per month, but I was craving a lot more. So I set out to find a solution.

I decided to make sushi at home!

Homemade Sushi

I’ve heard of people making sushi at home (obviously) but to be honest, the thought of it freaked me out a bit. Wouldn’t I need sushi grade fish? Could I keep it fresh enough?

Plus there were less serious but still present concerns, like that I’ve heard it’s very difficult to roll sushi well. And I didn’t want 20 new pieces of equipment in my kitchen just to enjoy a spicy tuna roll once in a while.

And of course, would I really save any money this way?

The answers are no, yes, it’s not bad, it’s not bad, and HELL YES.

I have a lot to talk about because I want to share an entire month’s worth of research and experimentation with you. I’ll start with some of what I’ve discovered and some lessons learned, then go into a generic ingredients list, then show you the price breakdown from several rounds of actually making sushi, and wrap up with other resources. Consider this your one-stop shop for finding information on making homemade sushi 😉

What I’ve discovered

I am by no means a sushi expert, so I’m just going to jot down some quick notes here and then let some links from other people handle the weightier topics.

• Be willing to experiment with flavors. I love spicy tuna rolls, and I love shrimp in rolls, but I’d never had a spicy shrimp roll. So far, that’s my favorite!
• Now that I’ve had sushi almost every week for a month, my craving has abated. I’ll be able to make sushi once or twice a month for the low low prices you’ll see below and save tons of money on one of my favorite meals!
• One cup of dry rice, when cooked, makes just about the right amount for three sushi rolls.
• Making sushi at home is much better for the waistline than stuffing yourself at an all-you-can-eat place, trying to “get your money’s worth.”
• The SeaSnax you’ll see pictured below was the wrong kind of nori (seaweed) to use for sushi. I bought it because it was hanging next to the kind I should have bought and came in the smallest package (5 sheets). I thought it made sense to try out a small amount before fully committing, since I didn’t know how much I’d like homemade sushi. I didn’t realize it lacked a lot of the structure of the real nori sheets. I’ve since purchased a 50 pack of the good stuff from Amazon (see Ingredients List).
• Food safety was a big concern of mine. I learned to get over it for tuna (you’ll see why momentarily) but I haven’t yet made the leap for other raw fish. I still need to do more research.
• Just buy the damn sushi rice. I tried repeatedly to get brown rice to work, and I haven’t *completely* given up. But it does not form a roll nearly as well as white sushi rice. I’m still going to work on it, but in the meantime this is what my poor rolls looked like:

(Note: this was immediately after shooting them out of the Sushezi sushi bazooka. You’ll hear more about that momentarily. The brown rice rolls continued to fall apart as I wrapped them in nori. Rolling brown rice rolls on a mat worked a bit better, but not much)

• If you run out of rice, make spicy tuna stuffed avocados!! Also a good option for all of you low carb/Keto/paleo/whatever eaters out there (I assume. I don’t actually know what those diet rules entail)

Lessons learned

Parasites are the problem with homemade sushi. And really all sushi.

Tuna is safe to eat raw from the grocery store, provided it’s been properly handled. I prefer to buy it frozen in small packs because then I only need to thaw the amount I want. I found a pack of six, ~5 oz tuna steaks that perfectly fits this bill.

Farmed salmon is also deemed safe if it’s been raised on parasite free feed. I haven’t quite gotten to the point of trusting my grocery store on this one yet, so I haven’t tried it. I do know other people who have though.

Every other type of fish is at risk for having parasites, though the risk is somewhat low. The way to kill the parasites is through freezing, so…

Get over your frozen fish aversion

Don’t be a snob about never eating frozen fish. Almost all fish meant for sushi – including from your favorite sushi place – is frozen before you eat it. That’s a good thing.

Flash (or super) freezing fish kills off potential parasites, so you can eat raw fish without worry…or at least, less worry. I’m not quite to the point of “without worry” yet. But I am comforted to know that most of the fish you buy in a grocery store has been through this process. If you want to know more, I recommend this very good article.

Besides…boats are slow. Don’t you want the fish frozen ASAP instead of keeping it “fresh” for the several days it takes to get to you? I do.

Homemade Sushi Ingredients List

Here are some typical ingredients for making homemade sushi. I’ve included prices for the items I’ve purchased since I started making homemade sushi. I purchase organic when possible. You do not need all of this at once. The minimum things you will need are the rice, rice vinegar, and sugar (for sushi rice), nori, plastic wrap, and some kind of filling.

Basics:

• Organic white sushi rice ($3 per pound, enough for 8-9 rolls)
• Rice vinegar ($3.19)
• Sugar
• Nori seaweed sheets (I paid $16 for 50 with a free bamboo mat, but right now it’s listed at only $15!)
• Plastic wrap

Veggies/other fillings and toppings:

• Organic cucumbers ($0.78 per large cucumber)
• Organic avocado ($1.50 each)
• Peppers
• Fried onions
• Green onions
• Carrots ($1 for a whole bag)
• Asparagus
• Organic cream cheese ($2)
• Sesame seeds

Sauce ingredients:

• Mayo (pro tip – Whole Foods mayo is weirdly tangy and not right for this. Just get regular mayo or make your own)
• Chili oil ($4)
• Sriracha
• Sesame oil ($4)
• Soy sauce ($2)
• Wasabi ($3)

Protein ideas:

Cooked:

• Egg omelets
• Scallops
• Shrimp
• Crab
• Imitation crab (one pack is $3-$4 and enough for about 5 rolls)
• Lobster
• I saw several recipes that called for smoked or otherwise cooked salmon and canned tuna. If you really want to Americanize your sushi (or introduce someone who is scared to try it), you can also use cooked teriyaki chicken, bulgogi beef or chicken, etc.

Raw:

• Frozen tuna is your safest bet ($18 for six ~5 oz steaks, which is enough for 12-18 rolls)
• Fresh or defrosted tuna
• Premade Poke (tuna or salmon)
• If you are willing to take the risk (DO YOUR RESEARCH) then you can branch out into raw salmon, Hamachi, etc

Sushi Making Equipment

Yes, there was some increase in kitchen tools to make this happen. However, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I thought I would need to get a whole new set of equipment, but it really wasn’t much at all.

Knife: You need a really good knife to slice the fish, julienne the vegetables, and cut through the rolls. This isn’t a job for a steak knife – a chef’s knife will probably be fine though. I sharpen it before I start cutting up ingredients and then again before slicing the finished rolls.

Towel: If you want to spend $0.00 on equipment to make sushi at home, this method is an easy way to create pretty decent rolls using only a kitchen towel and plastic wrap.

Mat: If you want to go a little bit fancier, you can buy a mat. Mine came for free with my 50-pack of nori, but you can buy them in a sushi making kit too. If you want rolls with rice on the outside (uramaki) you are going to need either a mat or the towel method. The next method only makes rolls with nori or another wrap on the outside.

Sushezi: This thing is cool. It’s faster than using a mat and makes very uniform rolls (it looks like a pro made them!). It’s completely not necessary, but if you want really nice looking sushi and the joy of squirting a nearly-completed rolls out of this thing, I highly recommend it!

Rice maker: I did not want to buy a dedicated rice maker – I don’t eat nearly enough rice to justify that. I also didn’t want to make it in a pot every time, because while I’m a decent cook I apparently cannot make rice without it boiling over and causing a huge mess.

Luckily, I purchased a Crock Pot Express MultiCooker (the Crock Pot version of an Instant Pot) back in November. If you guys end up liking this kind of post, maybe I’ll do another one on the MultiCooker. Bottom line, this thing is a lifechanger! I have become lazy in recent years and started eating out/eating prepared foods a lot more. This thing makes that unnecessary. I can have perfectly cooked rice in 20 minutes without paying attention to it at all. Not to mention all of the other features! Shredded chicken made from frozen breast to ready to eat in half an hour? Check. Perfectly soft boiled eggs in minutes? Check. Yogurt? Check. Life.Changer.

I certainly would not purchase this only to make rice for sushi, but that is a nice bonus feature for something I’d already purchased and loved.

Cost of Homemade Sushi

This is a personal finance blog, right? So let’s take a closer look at how much these rolls are costing me!

All prices are before tax and do not include the price of the equipment. Most of these items were tax free due to being food. Items marked with an asterisk (*) are estimated prices because I am not willing to carefully measure out and calculate the price of ingredients when I’m only using one teaspoon out of a 26 ounce container. Nor am I going to price out the 1/8 of a jalapeno I used in round 2 😂

Round 1

1 Tuna roll topped with spicy mayo and fried onions

1 Spicy Tuna topped with avocado

1 Shrimp roll

1 half avocado stuffed with spicy tuna

• Nori: 3 sheets from a $16 pack of 50 = $0.96
• Sushi Rice: 1 cup of organic brown rice = $1
• Tuna: 1 steak from multi pack = $3
• Shrimp: handful from a $12 bag = $1
• Cucumber: 1/2 of a $0.78 cucumber = $0.39
• Avocado: 1 organic avocado = $1.50
• *Spicy sauce: $0.20
• *Spicy Mayo: $0.20
• *Wasabi Soy Sauce: $0.20
• *Fried onions: $0.10

Total cost: $8.55

Average per roll/dish: $2.14

Round 2

1 Tuna roll topped with spicy mayo and fried onions

1 Spicy Tuna topped with avocado

1 faux-Philadelphia roll (I used smoked salmon)

1/4 of large cucumber, sliced and dipped in spicy mayo

• Nori: 3 sheets from a $16 pack of 50 = $0.96
• Sushi Rice: 1 cup of organic brown rice = $1
• Tuna: 1 steak from multi pack = $3
• Smoked Salmon: 1/4 of a $4 pack = $1
• Cucumber: 1/2 of a $0.78 cucumber = $0.39
• Avocado: 1/2 of a $1.50 organic avocado = $0.75
• Cream Cheese: 1/8 of a $2 block = $0.25
• *Spicy sauce: $0.20
• *Spicy Mayo: $0.20
• *Wasabi Soy Sauce: $0.20
• *Fried onions: $0.10

Total cost: $8.05

Average per roll: $2.69

Round 3

1 California roll topped with spicy mayo and fried onions

1 California roll with added cream cheese, topped with spicy shrimp

1 spicy shrimp roll topped with avocado (this has been my favorite so far!)

1/4 of large cucumber, sliced and dipped in spicy mayo

• Nori: 3 sheets from a $16 pack of 50 = $0.96
• Sushi Rice: 1 cup from a 5 cup bag of organic sushi rice = $1
• Shrimp: handful from a $12 bag = $1
• Crab: 1/4 of a $2.97 pack = $0.75
• Cucumber: 1/2 of a $0.78 cucumber = $0.39
• Avocado: 1/2 of a $1.50 organic avocado = $0.75
• Cream Cheese: 1/8 of a $2 block = $0.25
• *Spicy sauce: $0.20
• *Spicy Mayo: $0.20
• *Wasabi Soy Sauce: $0.20
• *Fried onions: $0.10

Total cost: $5.80

Average per roll: $1.94

Pretty great prices, right?? At those costs, I can afford to make 3 rolls at a go, twice a month, and spend less than $15 per month on sushi. With a side of vegetables, those 3 rolls easily turn into two meals, so I’ll be averaging about $4 per sushi dinner. And instead of spending more than $500/year on sushi, I’ll be spending less than $200/year and eating sushi more often. That’s not going to be life-changing amounts of money for me, but it’s not bad!

And heck, I can have a sushi party at my house and feed a table of 6 for about what it costs one person to go to a restaurant. Nice! I’ll be sticking with this for a while, I suspect.

More resources

Here are some other websites I used when making my way through this homemade sushi making extravaganza.

• Making Sushi: https://www.denverpost.com/2012/06/25/sushi-for-beginners-five-steps-to-making-sushi-at-home/
• Sushi rice recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/99211/perfect-sushi-rice/
• Includes a great infographic with recipe ideas: http://dish.allrecipes.com/how-to-make-sushi-rolls/?utm_source=pinterest&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=alr_890883199_ar_dailycontent

Have you made homemade sushi before? Leave a recipe for your favorite combination in the comments!