I grew up eating sushi back when it wasn’t as famous around the world as it is today. (Back when you couldn’t get sushi from the corner grocery store or from pizza places.) My mom made sushi from scratch, but we only really had it for special occasions, since it was a lot of work to make. (On extremely special occasions, we went out to a sushi bar, and that was amazing.)
Since having my own home, I’ve made sushi multiple times, not just for special occasions, but I must admit that the amount of work entailed, also in cooking the rice just so, preparing the fillings, and rolling it up makes it lower on the list of priorities of things to make, since I need to be able to set aside the time entailed.
I realized, though, that the thing I and my kids like best about sushi is the taste; the way it’s rolled up is nice and all, and makes for a fun meal, but if I could have it more often with less work, I’m totally fine without it being all rolled up pretty. That’s where sushi salad fits in. All the taste of sushi, none of the work! And I’ve even figured out a way to make sushi salad into a super quick and frugal meal using up leftovers, which is a real perk.
Sushi salad is flexible, and only needs a few base ingredients.
- Rice.
- Sweet and sour sauce.
- “Fillings”
For the rice, if I have leftover plain white rice, I just take that and add my sweet and sour sauce to it, giving it the flavor, if not texture, of sushi rice.
Sweet and Sour Sushi Rice Sauce
Ingredients:
1/3 cup vinegar (white, rice vinegar, or apple cider vinegar) or lemon juice
3 tablespoons sweetener (white sugar, jaggery syrup, maple syrup, date syrup, coconut sugar, or honey all work)
1 teaspoon salt
Instructions:
1. Mix all the ingredients together.
2. Bring to a boil, stirring well until everything dissolves.
3. Pour onto your rice, and mix well.
(This amount of sauce works for 6-8 cups of cooked rice, or more. But feel free to use it to taste, adding more or less if you want a stronger flavor.)
Once my rice is made, whether sweet and sour sauce added to leftover rice, or brand new sushi rice, I bring it to room temperature and I add any of the following ingredients to it. The more different ones the better, but it even works with just one or two. Feel free to add anything you enjoy in your sushi.
Veggie (and fruit) additions:
- Grated carrot
- Sauted julienned carrots and onions with ginger
- Diced cucumbers
- Cubed sweet potatoes
- Diced avocado
- Diced mango
- Diced bell peppers (ideally not green)
- Chopped purslane
- Chopped scallions
- Etc…
- Red lentil or chickpea omelette
- Omelet
- Tuna fish
- Sushi grade salmon
- Surimi/fake crab or homemade surimi
Toppings/extras:
- Soy sauce (use gluten free soy sauce to keep this gluten free) or coconut aminos
- Powdered ginger
- Sesame seeds
- Wasabi paste (I generally mix this with soy sauce to make it spread more easily in the salad; make sure this is gluten free to keep the recipe gluten free)
- Sesame oil
- Hot pepper flakes
- Spicy mayo (mayo mixed with sriracha; use my vegan mayo recipe if you want to keep this vegan)
- Finely chopped nori papers
This is called Poke in the United States. These "sushi salads" are a much cheaper alternative to traditional sushi.
My sister lived in Japan and in the area where she lived, such a 'salad' was how most Japanese people would eat their sushi at home. They didnt call it a salad though. The sushi as we in the west know was considered more like the restaurant style sushi. Everytime my sister made sushi for us, she prepared this salad-like sushi and we all loved it (well except for my husband who is African and not used to this kind of food lol).