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How To Make Perfect Sushi Rice For Vegan Sushi Rolls With Photos!

January 8, 2012 by Veronica Grace 12 Comments

Sushi rice is called sumeshi in Japanese. It is essential to making sushi, and contrary to what you may think it is not just plain white rice that is used. It is cooked and then seasoned to have a tangy sweet taste.

This page will tell you how to make the perfect sushi rice for sushi. Check out my recipe for Vegan California Rolls when you’re done.

How To Make Perfect Sushi Rice With Step By Step Photo Instructions

To make this recipe you will need:

2 cups sushi rice (short grain)
2 cups filtered water
3 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp herbamare or salt (You can use more if you wish, but you’re going to dip the sushi in soy sauce anyways which is very salty)

Tools needed:

Fine mesh strainer or sieve
Rice paddle or wooden spoon
Large Wooden/Glass/Ceramic/Plastic bowl (not metal)

Step 1: Measure out 2 cups dried sushi rice (short grain white or brown rice. It must be short grain!) You can double if desired, but this will make enough sushi for at least 4 large rolls and a small roll or two. Enough for 2 adults for dinner, or two single lunches.

Step 2: Rinse your rice through a fine metal sieve until the water runs clear, OR soak in a large bowl of water and mix around by hand to get the excess starch off. Rinse and soak a few times until the water is clearer. This is important and will make your rice turn out better.

Step 3: (Optional) Let your rice soak for 30 minutes.

Step 4: Place rice and 2 cups water into rice cooker or pot. (If using more rice, always use a 1:1 (same) ratio of rice and water)

Rinsed sushi rice in rice cooker

Step 5: Rice cooker instructions: Set the white rice program and let it cook. My favourite rice cooker is my Zojirushi 5 1/2 cup rice cooker because it has settings for white rice, brown rice, mixed rice, porridge and cake. Yes you can even cook cake in this rice cooker! It’s wicked. Check it out. If fancy rice cookers aren’t of any use to you, check out this Hamilton Beach rice cooker (for $45 with free shipping) I use frequently when cooking at my mom’s house. It’s great too for basic rice and has never overcooked or burned the rice. I used to use those $10 rice cookers with just an on off button, but often times they would turn off before the rice was done, overheat and cause overcooked or crusty rice. If cooking for a family, I highly suggest getting a decent rice cooker to free you up from the stove and the guesswork of making perfect rice. When the rice is done cooking and the buzzer goes off, leave the rice for 10 minutes to let steam. Don’t open it and don’t touch it.

Stove top instructions: In a pot, place the rinsed rice and equal parts of water and bring to a boil. Stir the rice occasionally to prevent any grains from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Once it reaches a boil, turn down the heat to medium low, cover with a lid and steam. Do NOT open the lid until the rice is done steaming. You will lose your moisture and heat and jeopardize your rice being cooked evenly. Use a clear glass lid if you can. The rice is done cooking when the water disappears, this happens between 8 and 10 minutes depending on the type of stove you have. Remove the rice from heat.

Perfectly cooked sushi rice

Step 6: Measure 3 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp granulated sugar and 1 tsp herbamare or salt. You can use more salt if you want, but really its not necessary if you’re going to be dipping your sushi in soy sauce which is super salty anyway.

Rice vinegar, sugar and herbamare (salt)

Step 7: Make sushi vinegar. Heat a small pot (not metal) over medium heat and add vinegar, sugar and herbamare (or salt). Stir.

Combine vinegar, sugar and salt in pot

Sushi vinegar is ready

When it is bubbling and everything is dissolved remove from heat and let cool.

Step 8: Remove rice from pot or rice cooker with a wooden spoon or that plastic rice scoop you have. You basically want to scrape the bottom and dump the rice in 1 or 2 strokes so that you don’t damage the sushi rice too much and mash it. Pour it out into a wooden, glass or plastic bowl. If you put it in a metal mixing bowl, you risk the chance of ruining the flavour when pouring vinegar on it and it reacting with the metal. Don’t do it. Only scoop out perfectly cooked rice, if any is stuck or undercooked, leave it in the pot.

Sushi rice removed from pot

Step 9: Gently cut into sushi rice with paddle to break up.

Perfect seasoned sushi rice

Step 10: Season sushi rice by drizzling sushi vinegar evenly across rice. Cut into rice gently again to combine and spread out the seasoning.

Let your perfect sushi rice cool off before making sushi. If it’s too warm it can stick to the sushi mat and be hard to work with. Now you are ready to prep your veggies or filling for sushi rolls!

How To Prep Veggies For Vegan Sushi Rolls

January 8, 2012 by Veronica Grace 3 Comments

Vegan California Rolls (Uramaki style)

This post is about how to prep your veggies to make vegan sushi rolls. Check out my recipe for Vegan California Rolls.

Vegan sushi rolls are great because they can appeal to everyone from vegans and vegetarians to people who would rather not eat traditional sushi that contains raw fish.

They are fun to make and can be made up in advance for fancy hors d’oeuvres, a potluck, a themed dinner, a lunch box, or a snack! Choose your favourite fillings and I will give you some tips on how to prepare them for putting into sushi rolls.

Generally, the Japanese do not eat raw plain vegetables in their sushi rolls. They mainly use raw fish, cooked shrimp, cooked crab, pickled daikon radish, egg roe, or cooked egg. The raw vegan friendly items you will find are generally cucumber and avocado. Basically because their texture is desirable raw and you can’t really cook them.

For other harder vegetables they are blanched or gently steamed so they can be easier to chew and more pleasurable to eat. You don’t have to steam your crunchy vegetables if you don’t want to. But I’ll give you some suggestions for which ones to do so for a more enjoyable roll.

For cucumber, the English variety is best because it has few seeds and is tender. You want to slice the cucumber about in half and then slice a 1/2″ thick slice vertically down the cucumber. Next julienne it in strips. You will need about 2 strips of cucumber for each roll you are making.

Slice out the seed portion from your cucumber. You don’t need to use it to make sushi rolls.

If you’re using Bell peppers (capsicum) you can leave them uncooked and raw and just slice the top off and julienne into strips.

For carrots, peel them and slice just like the cucumber into 1/2″ thick slices and then julienne.

I recommend steaming the carrots gently so they are not rock hard and crunchy in your sushi roll. It’s up to you, but steaming for 1-2 minutes will improve the eatability of your veggie sushi.

The carrots have turned a light orange and are al dente. Set aside to cool before rolling into sushi.

For avocado, ensure you have a ripe one. The one I have here is pretty ripe so that’s why it’s a little mushy. Generally sushi bars use semi ripe or a little underripe avocado because they go through so many of them and if they are firm it’s easier to work with. Personally I think crunchy watery unripe avocado is gross and will not use it in my cuisine. So pick a green avocado a few days before you want to make sushi and let it ripen on the counter. It is ripe when soft to the touch. Cut it open, pull out the seed and make slices into the avocado. You can pull out a slice at a time as you slice it, or scoop it all out with a spoon.

All my veggies are now prepped and ready to fill my sushi rolls.

Additional veggies you may want to use in your vegan sushi rolls:

green onion – leave raw, wash and slice lengthwise once and then horizontally once.
asparagus – cut off the hard bottoms, and steam gently for 1-3 minutes and let cool.
yams/sweet potato – peel and cut into long rectangular strips and steam until just cooked but still firm.
zucchini/courgette – peel and julienne like cucumber and steam gently for 1-2 minutes if desired. This improves flavour.
pickled daikon radish – can be purchased at Asian markets and julienned. They are usually bright yellow in colour and is used in Oshinko sushi rolls.
sprouts – you can simply wash and dry sprouts like sunflower or alfalfa and use in addition to other veggies in a sushi roll. By themselves would not be very flavourful.

You can also roll sliced tofu, marinated tofu, or bean curd skin in your vegan sushi rolls if desired as well.

Karmyn Malone’s Review Of My Savory Raw Dinner Recipes DVD and Book Set

January 5, 2012 by Veronica Grace 2 Comments

—————–
If you’d like to give the DVD set Savory Raw Dinner Recipes a try, you won’t
regret it.

Go to: http://www.plantbasedu.com/savory

Mediterranean Flax Tortilla Wrap

——————
My review of Veronica Grace’s Savory Raw Dinner Recipes System

by Karmyn Malone
——————

Aloha!

I want to share with you my thoughts on the new Savory Raw Dinner Recipes system
created by Veronica Grace the Low Fat Vegan Chef.

Once our daughter Rainbow was born I was ready for some new, raw, and savory recipes.
I’ve been getting “fruited out”really easily post pregnancy and need something savory
after each fruit meal.

Since I’m busy taking care of Rainbow (and Andrew!) I don’t have a lot of time to spend
in the kitchen creating new recipes.

I kept “bugging” Veronica to share her recipes with me,and once I tried making a few of
them I was thrilled at how most of them came out.

Strawberry Pecan Spinach Salad

My ABSOLUTE FAVORITE recipe is her “Strawberry Pecan Spinach Salad.” This
recipe alone makes owning her “Savory Raw Dinner Recipes” WORTH IT. If I could
make it everyday I would. It’s so good that once I went to four different stores looking for
fresh strawberries and was so disappointed when I had to come home empty handed!

Lower Fat Taco Salad

That day I decided to “settle” and made her “Low Fat Taco Salad” instead because I didn’t have
any strawberries. I have a similar taco salad recipe that I enjoy but she used a couple of KEY
ingredients in her salad that WOWED me! Hmmmmmm …. why didn’t I think to use those?

Thai Tom Kha Soup

“Easy Fat-Free Veggie Soup” is very light and refreshing. Another delicious, spicy and
hearty soup is ” Thai Tom Kha Coconut Soup.” I felt like I was in a cooked food Thai
restaurant but of course it’s prepared raw.

Definitely a recipe for the raw Thai food connoisseurs out there.

It’s so nice to have another raw recipe system that tastes great without resorting to using tons
of oil and salt (although some of the recipes do use a TINY amount of salt).

Also the recipes don’t take all day to prepare like the ultra complicated gourmet raw recipes
that will make you thirsty enough to drink toilet water, nor will they make you sick due to
the nuts, oils and avocado used in them!

I’m not kidding — many of those gourmet raw recipes will use nuts, oil AND avocado in one
recipe! I had a recipe like that recently that a friend prepared and I was sick to my stomach
for the rest of that night. I’m talking painful and laying in bed kind of sick.

Veronica Grace’s “Savory Raw Dinner Recipes” nicely compliments Roger Haeske’s
Savory Veggie Stews (http://www.veggiestews.com). In other words, they’re two distinctly different recipe systems.

Veronica's Amazing Raw Lasagna

There are simple recipes that you can make everyday as well as dinner party oriented recipes
to make for special occasions (I’m really looking forward to making “Veronica’s Amazing
Raw Lasagna”)

Some of the recipes do call for salt, onions and garlic. Of course this is completely
optional.

I’ve made some of those recipes without any salt and they’re still delicious.

And mind you the quantity of salt in these recipes is MUCH lower than what you’d find at
a typical gourmet raw food restaurant. I’m talking a pinch of salt.

BTW, I had a mega bowl of “Strawberry Pecan Spinach Salad” for lunch just before writing
this review today. Boy that salad really hits the spot.

A great thing about their system is if you’re not at all into using garlic, onions,
apple cider vinegar and salt, the recipes still taste great even if you omit these
ingredients. I was surprised that the flavor was still good when I omitted some of
these ingredients.

Also you can adjust the seasonings to your taste preferences and they still taste
great whether you like your food mildly seasoned, medium or super seasoned! There
were even certain condiments that I didn’t use at all and the recipes I made still
tasted AMAZING!

Fat Free Stuffed Peppers

Overall I’ve found the “Savory Raw Dinner Recipes” to be just what I needed to
balance out my sweet fruit consumption with more savory meals.

As a nursing mom, my dietary needs are much different than when I wasn’t nursing.
A constant source of mineral rich savory meals after fruit is now mandatory for me.

I think you’re going to find a number of recipes that’ll satisfy your need for
something hearty and savory and yet are easy to prepare.

With much aloha,

Karmyn

P.S. My 4 1/2 year old son Andrew just loves these recipes. He constantly asks me to make
Veronica’s recipes.

He licked his bowl CLEAN after eating her “Strawberry Pecan Spinach Salad” and her “Low
Fat Taco Salad” (when he does that then I KNOW it’s a new favorite dish for him!)
————–

Click the picture below to find out more about my program Savory Raw Dinner Recipes.

If you’d like to give the DVD set Savory Raw Dinner Recipes
a try, you won’t regret it.

Go to: http://www.plantbasedu.com/savory

If you’d like to find out more about Karmyn Malone and her raw food journey go to http://karmynmalone.com/ or find her on Facebook

Canadians Do You Do Extreme Vegan Couponing? Here’s How!

December 16, 2011 by Veronica Grace 3 Comments

(For my American readers click here)

Extreme Couponing is not just for the thrifty American Shopper. There are lots of deals to be had by the Canadian consumer!

I’m part way through reading a book called Be Centsable – How To Cut Your Household Budget In Half that teaches you how much easier and worthwhile using coupons is than you ever thought before.

One thing that I didn’t realize is that you CAN stack coupons, but not the exact same coupon. For example you can use a manufacturers coupon that you get in the mail or online, on top of a store coupon (or sale) for the same product. So you can effectively get your product at 50%, 75% or almost 100% off!

This is especially helpful for those with families or babies that go through a lot of extra care products or that need specialty food items. Also for those on a student or single person budget. I was surprised how much I found out within an hour of looking for and signing up for access to free coupons online. It pays to do a little research!

Keep in mind that you will have to give out some personal information to either download or have online coupons mailed to you, but these databases are run securely, you can unsubscribe at any time and you don’t really have to use your real name or your main email address. If you’re concerned about it, make a new email address just for these coupon sites that way when you’re ready to look for your coupons they’re all in one place if you easily get distracted or overwhelmed with daily emails.

The trick to optimizing coupon usage is to do a little research before hand.

#1. Write down prices of products you regularly buy at your local grocery or discount stores (both regular and sale prices), you can also use the receipt and do it at home later and just try to remember if your products were on sale or not. You need to know exactly how much your products cost you at regular price, so you can be aware of cheaper or sale prices elsewhere.

#2. Pick up the weekly flyer at your local grocery store and see if they have any holiday sales on (like a certain % off of your purchase, or $ amount off a total purchase price) in store coupons, or sales on products you need to buy anyway.

#3. Stack your manufacturer coupons on top of the in store coupon or sale price at the check out counter and start saving!

Here is my list of awesome sources for Canadian Coupons:

(For my American readers click here)

Smart Canucks an awesome website that shows coupons from multiple websites including save.ca and brandsaver.ca

Save.ca

The Healthy Shopper For Organic and Natural Products – This one is awesome!

Well.ca doesn’t have coupons, but they do run sales and offers free shipping in Canada which is great

Now remember, you’re not going to start seeing many savings if you just use a coupon here or there and save $0.50 or $1.00 off at the till on top of the sale price, you want to start getting excited about it, watching for sales, stocking up on things you buy anyway when you have coupons and in store discounts and holding off buying extra until you do. You have MUCH better things to be spending your extra savings on like reducing debt, mortgage payments, RSP saving, tuition saving, investing, vacations, etc. Your grocery budget will expand to whatever you let yourself spend, so if you take those direct savings, watch for deals and sales, you will have extra money to do what you need with that didn’t get spent at the grocery store!

For more information on how to make using coupons and organizing your shopping easier check out these books:

Now that you have some awesome resources to get you thinking of ways to save on your every day groceries and household products, what are you waiting for?

Are you going to start looking for coupons before going shopping next week?

Extreme Vegan Couponing To Save On Groceries: Can You Do It Too?

December 16, 2011 by Veronica Grace 5 Comments

(For Canadian readers click here for your extreme coupon links)

You may have heard about this show called Extreme Couponing that shows how regular people live on an extremely tight or thrifty budget, often paying only a few dollars for hundreds of dollars of groceries and personal care products because their coupons paid the rest.

To some, it may seem silly, like a full time job in coupon scavenging and clipping coupons like crazy in every single flyer every week, but it doesn’t have to be this way to make a big difference in your food cost spending. But when it comes to quality ingredients, organic produce and products can be expensive, so it does pay to save.

Recently I ordered a book from Amazon called Be Centsable – How To Cut Your Household Budget In Half (what a great title I might add!) and I’m only part way through it and I’m convinced that we could be saving A LOT more money if I just collected coupons on products we already regularly buy.

The trick to optimizing coupon usage is to do a little research before hand.

#3. Stack your manufacturer coupons on top of the in store coupon or sale price at the check out counter and start saving!

I did some research and found some AWESOME sites for free coupons in both Canada (for my fellow Canadians) and the USA. I really thought that Canada would be at a disadvantage for some extreme couponing, but I’ve already downloaded a bunch of coupons for natural and organic products that we buy anyways, that I can now save money on next time at the health food store. How exciting!

Here is my list of resources for American Coupons:

For Canadian readers click here

Vegan Coupons Go to their Facebook page and great great coupons on vegan friendly products!

Be Centsable Coupon Database (Tracks every coupon, every store sale, including retail! Save big and plan out your grocery, clothing and personal care shopping at a deep discount)

All You Magazine Subscription Coupons: Every issue of All You contains valuable coupons for fashion, food, makeup and household basics. With high coupon totals each month (more than $60 recently), this magazine pays for itself many times over.

For more information on how to save big money on couponing check out these resources:

Be Centsable How To Cut Your Household Budget In Half

Pick Another Check Out Lane, Honey

The Coupon Mom’s Guide To Cutting Your Grocery Bill In Half

If you want to stay organized on the go, check out these cool wallets!

Deluxe Coupon Organizer Wallet

Double Deluxe Coupon Organizer Wallet

What about you? Have you ever clipped coupons, stacked coupons or gone to any of the sites I’ve listed above?

80/10/10 Recipe: Grapefruit Soup With Step By Step Pictures!

December 14, 2011 by Veronica Grace 5 Comments

Grapefruit soup is an easy 1 ingredient (mono) meal you can have for a breakfast or a snack. It’s 80/10/10 friendly and fat free. They key is to use very sweet juicy grapefruits. My favourite are red grapefruits. Right now we’re in Texas for Christmas, so we are using the Texas Star Grapefruits here. They’re quite good. I wouldn’t suggest using this recipe for more sour white grapefruits.

My friend made this for me and I photographed him doing so, so you can easily see how to get an easy to eat grapefruit meal with no seeds or excess peel or skins.

For this recipe I used 3 grapefruits. 2 to cut into chunks and 1 to juice over the chunks.

(Fat Free Raw Vegan) Grapefruit Soup

Using a sharp knife, cut off both ends of the grapefruit so you can see the flesh inside. Cut away enough that you don’t have any white pith or peel left.

Flip the grapefruit onto one of the cut ends and start cutting off the sides of the peel and pith all the way around.

Now cut the grapefruit into 3 slices and remove any seeds you see.

Continue cutting into slices.

Stand up the centre piece and cut around the middle, like you would the core of an apple. Discard this piece.

Line up your slices and now cut into bite sized chunks.

Your first grapefruit is done. Continue the same process with the second grapefruit and place the pieces into a bowl.

Slice the 3rd grapefruit in half. Remove the seeds.

Using a knife or a citrus reamer squeeze the grapefruit and turn to release the juice. Alternatively you can use a citrus juicer.

Continue juicing the other side of the grapefruit.

Serve!

What do you think of this simple recipe? You can also do this with sweet oranges or pineapple. The key is to use sweet ripe fruit. Makes sure to eat this right away as the fresh juice will oxidize and go sour if you leave it out or in the fridge for a few days.

How To Tell If A Banana Is Ripe With Pictures! (A Yellow Banana Is Not Ripe Enough)

October 23, 2011 by Veronica Grace 85 Comments

So you want to know how to tell if a banana is ripe and if the ones you have are ripe enough.

One of the most troubling things I find when promoting fresh fruits and vegetables to people is that they don’t understand that many fruits have to ripen before being eaten.

You cannot just assume you can simply pick the fruit up from the grocery store display, take it home and eat it right away like a frozen dinner, a box of pasta or a can of beans. (There are a few exceptions like apples and oranges.) As society gets more and more out of touch with fresh whole foods and the majority of people are unable to identify the ingredients they are eating in processed foods, they don’t know what fruits and vegetables are supposed to taste like in general, let alone when they are unripe, ripe or overripe. …

How To Enjoy Eating A Lot Of Apples or How To Have an Apple Happy Meal!

October 22, 2011 by Veronica Grace 6 Comments

FTC Notice: This post contains affiliate links that go towards supporting the blog.

So you live in a Northern climate, it’s winter, there’s not a lot of tropical fruit around, there’s not really any “ripe” fruit around, you don’t have a lot of money to spend on produce; you’re hungry and want an easy inexpensive meal.

My friends, let me introduce to you the apple. It’s quite versatile and easy to get ALL over the world all year round. They keep well, can lasts for weeks if not months in the fridge or a cold cellar.

But how do you get this apply-goodness inside you without it being a pain in the jaw and eating all those waxy peels?…

How To Make Homemade Low Fat Raw Vegan Almond Milk In A Blender

October 7, 2011 by Veronica Grace 16 Comments

FTC Notice: This blog post contains affiliate links that go towards supporting the blog.

Almond milk is something that many people use nowadays, whether they are vegan or have dairy allergies. Sure you can buy some (non raw) almond milk at the store for your smoothies or cooking, but there’s likely going to be sugar, preservatives and other additives and synthetic stuff in it as well. While it is convenient to use pre made almond milk, it’s not a good idea to base your whole diet on processed packaged foods.

It’s very easy to make at home, and most cost effective if you enjoy using almond pulp in recipes like raw bars, cookies, crackers, or drying it out to use for almond flour. This raw almond milk is great for using in raw smoothies, raw banana ice-cream and raw dressings.

This low fat almond milk is also a nice pretty white colour and not browny tinged from additives like processed almond milk! Beautiful.

How To Make Your Own Homemade Raw Vegan Almond Milk

Ingredients:

1 cup of whole raw shelled almonds
Enough water to cover almonds if soaking overnight
4 cups filtered water (for making milk) If you want it even thinner use 5 cups of water.

Required tools:

Container to soak almonds
Metal mesh strainer/nut milk bag
Vitamix, Blendtec or other blender

Directions:

1. Soak almonds in a bowl or container with enough water to cover and let sit overnight, around 8 hours. (You can skip this step if you have a Vitamix or Blendtec)

2. Drain and rinse the almonds. Place into Vitamix or other blender with 4 cups of filtered water. Blend for about 45 sec to a minute on high. Just until all the almonds are in tiny pieces and it’s frothy.

3a. If using a nut milk bag hold the bag open over a large bowl and gently pour the blended almond milk into the middle of the open bag. Be careful not to spill pulp over the sides. Pour a little at a time and put the blender container down and close the bag at the top and squeeze the bag into the bowl to separate the almond pulp from the almond milk. You can either save the squeezed almond pulp to dry into almond flour or use to make cookies or nut balls or compost it. Continue this process until you have separate all the milk from the almond pulp. If you can’t stand and squeeze you can hang the bag filled with pulp and almond milk up above the bowl and let it drain for a while or in between breaks. Using a good quality nut milk bag you should only have to strain the milk one time if you didn’t spill any pulp over the edge.

3b. If using metal mesh strainers: get out 3 medium bowls or containers. Hold your small metal mesh strainer over one of the bowls and pour the almond mixture slowly into it. Fill up the strainer and then use a spoon to push the liquid down from the pulp. Place the extra pulp in one of the bowls if you want to save it for later. This will take a while. If using a metal strainer, keep filling it up with almond mixture and filtering the pulp from the milk with your spoon and set the pulp aside. Rinsing your strainer in between each filter will make it easier to strain and get rid of the little pieces stuck to it. After you have filtered your almond milk once, you may want to filter the whole thing a few more times for a smooth milk. Place your filter over the last clean bowl and pour your filtered almond milk over it. You should see some froth and a little pulp being filtered out the second time. Rinse your other bowl and strainer and filter back and forth until your almond milk is smooth to your liking. I do this 6-8 times with a metal strainer for the smoothest milk.

5. Once you’re done you can store the almond milk in the fridge. Depending what you want to do with it you can leave it plain, or blend in a date and some vanilla for sweet almond milk.

I leave mine plain so I can use it for things like banana ice-cream, chia “tapioca” pudding, smoothie base, dressing base etc. I just add pitted dates or vanilla extract or fresh vanilla bean to the recipe if I need a sweet milk.

Best used within 3 days. Store in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.

Have you ever made your own plant based milk at home? What’s your favourite?