Maki - The Inverted Sushi

These days I keep seeing sushi with it's filling wrapped outside it instead of traditionally tucked inside. It inspired me to want to make some myself. Well, since I didn't have any unagi or avocados, i made do with what I had in my fridge. I made a teriyaki chicken sushi. I marinated my chicken in my homemade teriyaki sauce (recipe ahead) for about 3-4 hours before i pan fried them to a golden caramelized brown. With the excess marinate, don't let it go to waste. Just reduce it on a medium high heat until it's halved. Turn off heat and add the chicken pieces in to evenly coat them with the dark sticky goodness. After that, you're ready to fill them in. I didn't wrap my chicken teriyaki around my maki rolls though, I just didn't think it was plausible so I wrapped thin strips of carrots and cucumbers instead. It just looks lovely as it is.





This is how a maki looks like - the nori is rolled inside instead of the outside like the usual sushi rolls.





For the perfect sushi rice, you can check out my Making Sushi post. To roll a maki is a little trickier than the normal sushi because the rice is quite sticky. All you need to do is fill up the nori sheets with rice as usual and then turn them over onto a plastic wrapper. Then roll as you would normally do. It doesn't stick that way :)

Here's what I put in and out of my maki:

For the inside, I added teriyaki chicken as i had mentioned earlier, julienned yellow capsicum/bell peppers, romain lettuce and tofu sheets.

For the outside, I used paper think strips of carrots and cucumbers. To which, after I cut them up, I drizzled some of the teriyaki sauce and topped it off with some sesame seeds.

It's as simple as that.

Before I forget, here's how you can make your own teriyaki sauce to which you can store at home and use it as marinate for any types of meat you want.

Teriyaki sauce recipe:
1 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoon thick dark soy sauce
1 cup mirin/ rice wine vinegar
4 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt

Method:
1. Combine all ingredients together and pour it over a pan. Heat it up for about 3-5 minutes, until the sauce thickens.
2. Turn of heat and let the sauce cool before you store it in a container and then fridge.

This versatile sauce is handy to have around because it's very useful for grilling and marinating meats and even vegetables. Try adding some mashed up cloves of garlic into the marinate as well. They always turn out good :)


***p.s: you can make this sushi vegetarian as well by substituting the chicken with mock meats.