- I mean, I like all of it.
Anything with like sushi rice and raw fish.
- [Videographer] Raw catfish?
- Hah, hells yeah man, bud and everything.
- [Videographer] Redneck sushi, man.
- Keep those whiskers on there.
I'm a food stylist, consider me a makeup artist for food.
I take boring everyday, average food
and make it look amazing.
We are here today to make sushi.
Have you subscribed to Food Stylist vs?
If not, you need to do that, like,
comment, subscribe the whole shebang.
Get it over with, and then we'll do this
and we'll get this over with because I'm freaking out.
Sushi is like beautiful, it's probably
the world's first and foremost food trend, right?
Like I said, I'm freaking out because
I haven't made sushi in a very long time.
And so I do feel super out of practice.
We're just gonna see how it goes.
I thought I'd put a really fun theme
on Food Stylist vs Sushi, so we're going date night style.
We're gonna do nigiri, classic sashimi,
and then we're also going to do a couple rolls.
A traditional roll has the seaweed on the outside
and then the American version of that,
which is an inside-out roll, the rice is on the outside.
Which is probably what we're going to do today.
It gives more of a contrast.
And the very first and most important thing is
you wanna have everything ready to go
before you start making your sushi.
So we're gonna start with the Philadelphia roll.
It's salmon, cucumbers, and or avocado, and cream cheese.
I already have some cucumber prepped here,
and then I have an avocado, which I have
a bowl of lime juice concentrate over to the side here
and this beautiful avocado is just gonna
sit in that liquid until we're ready to use.
Cream cheese in sushi is like also a hot topic of debate.
I know some people like love it, and some people hate it.
Personally, I love cream cheese and sushi.
I think it's delicious.
So comment below and let us know if you
like cream cheese in your sushi.
Or if you think that's like sacrilegious or whatever.
It also helps if you work with frozen cream cheese too
and get super super clean slices.
I picked out a smoked salmon that
had a very bright pink color.
Before we make our roll we also wanna make sure
we have all of our tools that we need.
So, a bamboo mat is obviously essential for making sushi.
If you don't have a bamboo mat,
it's not the end of the world.
You can use other things, like parchment paper,
or plastic wrap, or a cloth, or cardboard.
So for this, since we're going it inside-out roll,
and the rice is gonna be on the outside,
I'm gonna cover our bamboo mat in plastic
so that the rice does not stick to the bamboo.
We have our rice, with like a rice vinegar dressing,
so it's a little sweet and tangy.
It's over a bowl of warm water so
that it stays warm enough to handle.
I also have a bowl of water that has
a little bit of rice vinegar in it.
Because the rice is super starchy,
it'll help not stick to my hands as much
and help me manage it.
The last thing we need before we start rolling,
before we get rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin',
is sushi nori, which could be found at
pretty much all the grocery stores.
So the shiny side is the side that it's gonna go down.
But we're gonna do rice first.
So you start by putting the rice in sort of like the center.
And then spreading it out to the edges,
and then you go down.
Okay, so now we have our nori.
We are going to do the smoked salmon down first,
and we're gonna work along the center of the nori.
I laid my salmon down first cause I
wanted it to sort of encase all the other
ingredients that I put inside the sushi roll.
And now I'm just sort of like
shingling them back towards me.
You take the edge of the bamboo
and we're gonna go over the center ingredients.
And we're not really like pressing down on it,
we're just rolling it over until everything meets together.
So now that is rolled, then you kind of like
shape it, kind of square it off with my hands.
And there we have our first roll.
We're gonna go ahead and go into
our second rolled sushi that we're gonna make.
Because we're going date night themed,
I thought I would do a really fun combination of things.
I'm calling it the bringing sexy back roll.
Hah, that's so great.
So this roll is going to have tuna,
jalapeno, bacon, and green onion, a sriracha mayo,
and some little like crunchy things on top too.
We have our beautiful bluefin tuna.
One thing that's really important about tuna,
they call it the grain that runs through the fish,
and so it's these white lines.
And if you slice against the grain it's easy to chew.
So I'm going sticks on this tuna.
See I would eat that, this is basically what sashimi is.
So basically with our bacon,
we just want it to sort of be similar.
That's really what we're looking for,
just for like cohesiveness.
I have jalapeno sticks, so the seeds have been taken out
and they've just been julienned.
And then we have our green onion.
I'm not gonna use the white part of the green onion.
I don't want it to be like overpowering,
and I think the white part sometimes is like really strong.
So this is something that is a staple
in sushi restaurants, is a spicy aioli.
A lot of times you're kind of like "I wonder what it is?"
Well I'll tell you right now what it is.
It's sriracha and mayonnaise, oh and crispy topping.
These are fried shallots.
I've got my rice laid out, I've got my nori down.
So we're gonna start with the fish.
And it's okay that either it A,
hangs out over the edge a little bit,
or if they sort of overlap.
That's okay too.
I do have to find a lot of self-restraint
when I'm putting fillings in sushi,
because I just wanna add like four pieces of that
and like 12 pieces of that, and you can't.
So we go over the center.
Oh he's a little lopsided.
This is the tricky part you guys.
So, we are moving on from rolled sushi to nigiri.
So nigiri is raw fish, or other, on a rice ball.
So we have our little egg-sized portion of sushi rice.
We have wasabi, that store-bought.
And basically we go and add a little bit
of wasabi on to the sushi rice.
And then I have this beautiful shrimp.
First, we cooked it by skewering it with,
we skewered it with a skewer, and boiled it.
And then you just run your knife along
through the center of the shrimp.
You don't cut all the way through, but almost.
And then you just open it up, like so.
And then he sits right on top of that rice bowl.
And we wanna like fan the tails out and be really fancy.
That's so fun.
So this salmon has such a beautiful
grain that runs through it.
I would like to use this part of the salmon here,
that has this like really pretty spiral look to it.
So I'm gonna cut it right down this middle vein.
I'm gonna take the skin off of the bottom.
So now we're gonna do some thin slices
and we're gonna do a little dab of cream cheese.
We have a everything bagel seasoning.
The only reason we're doing it on the inside,
you can do it on the outside,
but I just wanna see this beautiful salmon.
My last roll that I'm gonna make
for our sushi board is a hand roll.
And I am referencing this really great book
that helps me brush up on my sushi-making.
It's called "The Sushi Experience".
If you would like to be more familiar with sushi,
the culture of sushi, and pretty much everything
there is to know about sushi,
this is a really great book to reference.
We're gonna do a vegetarian hand roll,
for all you veggie lovers out there.
We are going to do carrot, cucumber, avocado,
let's do some jalapeno, and probably some green onion too.
So we start with the nori in your hand
and then you get your rice, about the size of your nigiri.
You're just like making a little
divot for all of our fillings.
And you start by folding it over,
wrapping it kind of like a blanket.
And then you have a hand roll.
I guess they call it a hand roll
cause you make it in your hand, haha.
So I'm gonna do this one the same way,
but I'm gonna actually add a little
bit of spicy aioli to this one.
This is more like freeform sushi.
You know you can kind of do whatever
because you're rolling is like super chill.
Now it's time to pull our sushi rolls back out
and start building our board.
First things first, we have our sushi board
that's gonna be on our beauty set.
It's late, super sexy.
We are going to cut our sushi rolls.
Okay, it's not like the most beautiful sushi
I've ever seen in my whole life, but that's okay.
My first bringing sexy back roll,
I didn't feel really confident about it.
It felt like it was really loose on the inside,
like I didn't roll it tight enough.
So I went back and made another one,
and because I had cream cheese leftover
from making that Philadelphia roll, I put it in there.
So now we're going to go ahead and start
putting our sushi rolls on our board.
So I have my spicy aioli for the bringing sexy back roll.
A little crunchy topping, tobiko, which I really like
and it adds a really great pop of color.
I have a couple of lemon wheels
that I'm gonna add to the board.
And then wasabi.
And then I picked out pickled ginger, it's very pretty.
It also has just like a really nice like golden color.
All right so, now that it's built,
we're gonna take it back over to our photo set
and finish this bad boy off so we can
roll on outta here, how about that?
We're here, we have our beautiful sushi board.
It's date night at Food Stylist vs.
I'm a perfectionist to the core,
and so I'm giving myself a little bit of a hard time,
but it really does look beautiful.
Our photographer did an amazing job
lighting this and just making it look like elegant and sexy.
What better to go with our date night sushi board
than some saki and some Japanese whiskey.
Before we wrap, I just wanna say thank you
for taking this sushi journey with me.
It definitely has been fun and creative and explorative.
I'm gonna turn it over to our photographer.
He's gonna take a couple of really awesome snapshots
of this beautiful sushi board.
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and following Food Stylist vs on YouTube.
Comment below, let us know what you thought about
this episode, and what you wanna see me food style next.
Cheers to date night, sushi date night, and whiskey.