How To Make Hand Rolls

[Christina] It's easier to do it faster,

but I'm basically slowly just rolling this bottom edge

around like a cone. That was a terrible instruction.

Okay, wait, should we do this with just the dry kim?

Look, look, look, look, look, it's like this,

Uh-huh.

And you're kind of going like this [chuckles].

Like you're giving yourself a hug?

Yeah, weirdly, that's like the best way

I can think of to explain it.

[bright upbeat music]

To me, hand roll is like far from a technical term.

I feel like, number one, you want your seaweed,

and kim, is the Korean name.

You want your seasoned rice.

And then, I feel like the part where

we get to go crazy is with the toppings.

The other reason why I like it too,

is because it takes the work out of preparing stuff

because half the point of it-- Yeah.

is that people prepare their own thing.

I know, and it's exciting because now

we're starting to see people and have these gatherings,

and this would be like, a perfect one to do.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is like sort of my

like glorious return to summer group hang kind of meal.

Totally, totally

[Christina] So rice,

it's the thing that's going to take the longest to cook in

the recipe. So once we get it on the stove,

we have a good chunk of time to get everything else ready.

I am using a medium grain rice today for the purposes of the

hand rolls.

We're looking for something that we can kind of just evenly

and smoothly spread.

That'll have that nice sticky texture so that the role

adheres to itself, once we get wrapping.

So we have our rice measured out and before we cook it

really important step,

we're going to rinse it really well so that we release some

of that excess starch.

This is going to ensure that it doesn't get that kind of

gummy and really wet, sticky texture that you can find.

It's the worst feeling you can see immediately,

all of the starch is coming out in the water is super white

and cloudy, which is a good thing.

If you don't want to go through the trouble of washing a

sieve afterward, which is me to a tee.

I just sort of tip it out. And so this is good.

We have our rinsed rice.

The method that I'm doing today

is going to be stove top rice.

I feel like I generally opt for the stove top option because

it's just the fastest thing.

I always eyeball the water for my rice at home.

[Susan] Yeah

And I generally feel like I do, you know,

a one to one plus ratio of rice to water.

You were talking about different ways of gauging,

eyeballing, whether or not you have

the proper amount of water in the pot.

This is not something that I was ever taught.

My mom, I think always measured--

Yeah

the water and the rice,

but I have heard different versions of this.

[Susan] Mm-hmm

Do you have a thing?

Yeah, even though I grew up using a rice cooker,

I've also been taught first knuckle.

That was what I was taught too.

When you just, and you don't push it in, but, it should

just kind of hit that for someone.

You're like, wait,

everyone's like fingers are different lengths and all that.

It just works. [Chuckles]

I'm going to bring this to a boil over high heat and then

immediately cover it. Let it do its thing.

We'll check on it in like 20 minutes.

While the rice is cooking,

we're going to start the vegetable prep.

[Upbeat music]

The first thing that I'm going to be prepping is our pickled

daikon. Here she is.

[Christina] That's a beautiful daikon.

She's beautiful. Her hair. Daikon is a radish.

It's a radish that is used often in Korean cooking.

And what we're going to be doing with this is pickling it.

You should save those.

Yeah, definitely save these because this is actually

a delicious kimchi that you can make as well.

I'm going to go ahead and take the Y peeler and peel this,

especially for what we're doing today,

which is like a quickle.

[Christina] Yeah, I love quickle

This will expedite the process of getting this like

vinegar, sugar, water mix into its pores.

So I'm going to cut it, thinking about

the length of the handle.

[Christina] Oh, that's smart.

[Susan] We're going to do long, skinny batons

Should we call it batons?

[Christina] Yeah, sure. They're batons.

And then I'm going to go straight down.

So what we got are these.

[Christina] Very, very pretty, it's the perfect size.

You know, these tops are so pretty,

we're going to also put it in there as well.

[Christina] I'm excited for that.

The quick, quickle recipe is very easy to remember.

It's three parts, vinegar, two parts water, one part sugar.

The water is already measured out.

We want the sugar to completely melt.

And then that hot mixture is going to be poured

over to our, batons.

And what we need now is sometime, a little bit of time.

Pause for a sec because my rice timer just went off.

[Susan] Okay.

What I'm hoping for is that it's going to be

sort of mostly dry, looks like it would just be

barely sticking together.

Let's see how we did that looks pretty good.

[Susan] Oh.

[Christina] I don't want the surface of the rice

to look wet. If it looks wet on the top,

it's going to be wet on the bottom.

With the hand rolls, you really don't want it to be wet

because the second kim gets wet.

There's just, you know,

[Susan] [Indistinct]

just becomes floppy--

[Susan] Yeah.

and like not very pleasant to eat.

The last thing that we will do to this is we're going to

season it and fluff it. I have the same rice vinegar,

a little bit of sugar, some salt.

And then I'm just going to whisk that and I'm doing it

separately in the bowl.

You want this to be a homogeneously seasoned pot of rice.

You don't really want like

random granules of sugar and salt.

And then we're just going to drizzle that over the rice,

unlike a lot of roll recipes, this recipe doesn't have

any kind of dipping sauce or soy sauce.

So we're trying to build flavor into the role itself as much

as we can. And because a big chunk of the role is the rice.

That's why we season the rice.

Now I'm going to prepare the second ingredient

of this role, which is asparagus. And--

[Christina] It's also already, basically

in that baton form.

That's an excellent point. It's just ready to hang out.

The blanching water's already going.

And I like to do a heavy salt.

Blanching is boiling.

It's boiling on a deadline.

Exactly. So we can also say like,

we're boiling this for less than a minute.

The way that I prep an asparagus,

it's going to tell you where to snap. If you go like this,

[snaps]

It immediately snaps where sort of the stalky woody fibrous

parts are that you don't want to eat.

So I'm actually going to snap all of them.

[Christina] So satisfying.

It is very satisfying.

I just cut this in half, because again,

I'm envisioning the size of the hand.

[Christina] Those are perfect.

So how long are you going for?

[Susan] Less than 60 seconds.

[Christina] So you're good, right?

I'm great. [chuckles]

[Christina] I'm just going to make some tuna.

Yeah.

[Bright upbeat music]

With the tuna, as we talked about before,

riff on your sort of classic spicy tuna roll,

which is typically made with raw tuna.

[Susan] Right.

Not messing with that.

I don't want to feel prohibited from making a recipe like

this, just because I don't have raw fish.

Take these guys just straight into a bowl.

We're going to add a couple of seasonings that feel sort of

classic to that spicy tuna vibe.

Mayo, Sriracha, toasted sesame oil.

And then I'm also just going to add some toasted sesame

seeds.

[Susan] Perfect.

[Christina] You're aiming for mostly mayo

seasoned with spice, with a hint of sesame.

Just going to slice up my scallion quickly and add that to

the mix. I find this to be extremely hard to mess up.

[Susan] If you pour the whole ramekin of salt, maybe,

but yeah, exactly. You can't mess this up.

I'm going to set that aside and we'll revisit that

when we plate everything.

Wonderful news.

Okay great.

Christina, guess what time it is?

It's egg time.

[Christina] It's egg time!

[Susan] Specifically egg ribbon.

I'm going to do two eggs and just going to season it

with a little salt and pepper, let's get a little oil.

Are you trying to be on high heat or?

I'm going to do like medium high.

I'm just getting the oil hot right now.

But I also think it wouldn't be bad on high.

It would just go in fast. I'm swirling it around.

Let's flip. Few seconds on the other side.

And then right onto the cutting board.

We're going to let it cool just a little bit

so that it's going to be easier for me to handle.

And that's when I'm going to slice it into ribbons.

I'm going to do my last couple of veg prep things--

Please, please.

And then I think we're going to be ready to plate.

And eat.

[Christina] And eat. I have a cucumber, an avocado.

I'm just gonna slice these up.

They're going to be additional fillings

for my spicy tuna rolls.

[Susan] Yep.

[Christina] We want everything to adhere to that

Baton shape as much as possible.

Yeah, and I think now this is definitely cooled down

enough for me to handle. So I'm going to roll it up.

We're going to just slice these thin into ribbons.

We got 'em.

[Christina] Oh, those are gorgeous.

[Susan] Fluff it.

Then my last thing that I wanted to prep is just some

thinly sliced avocado. I'm going to use a half of one,

just do thin slices all the way through.

I'm just building my plate. I'm so excited to feed you.

[Christina] Will you open this for me?

Yes, and you're having me open this

because you're scared to open it?

Yeah. Once upon a time,

they had some issues with the jars exploding,

but I get very, very scared of loud noises.

I couldn't listen to fireworks without doing this until I

was like a teenager.

[Susan] Ready, I'm going to do it as we're talking.

Yeah.

Anticlimactic.

[Christina] And the kimchi,

I'm not doing anything to that. I'm just chopping it up,

putting it in a little bowl. You want to?

Oh yeah.

Cut up our kim.

I was thinking of just doing it in, in quarters.

I think that's the right size for--

[Susan] For our hand rolls

[Christina] For our hand rolls, yeah. Hey Suze?

[Susan] Yeah.

[Christina] Can you grab me my special bowl in the fridge?

You know which one I'm talking about.

[Susan] That's right.

[Christina] My stacked fridge

You happen to have some roe in your fridge?

Yes I do.

Oh, it's so good.

So I'm using trout row.

Very special, fancy little topper.

I've chosen for this to be my substitute for what I would

say, would be like a dipping sauce component, right?

The second you bite into that row,

you get all of that super briny, like really,

really savory deliciousness.

And more saltiness ultimately too.

[Christina] Yeah.

Yeah

[Christina] And so toppings kim, rice,

got everything we need. We're ready to build.

Let's do it.

[Bright upbeat music]

So I was thinking we could do two styles of wrapping,

one kind of basic log and--

Nothing basic about it but go on, yes.

And then a cute little cone.

Let's start with the cone.

[Christina] Okay, fun

Yeah.

[Christina] Gonna grab a piece of our kim.

There is typically a shinier side.

You always want that side to be facing out.

Like you want the shiny side down.

I'm putting about a tablespoon of rice on the bottom third

of my kim. Using warm rice definitely helps to make

this a lot easier to evenly spread out.That looks great.

And then I'm going to add just relatively small amounts of

all my different toppings for my tuna hand rolls in a

neat line, as close to the center of the rice as I can.

[Susan] I'm going to start with my protein,

the egg ribbons.

[Christina] Yeah.

I'll let the pea shoots peek out one side

so you can see them once the cone is rolled up. Lots of roe.

And then starting from one corner,

you're kind of just going to roll this into a cone shape.

And you can use a tiny bit of rice on the far corner

to sort of seal it like a little sticker and that'll

keep them in place until you're ready.

I mean, I'm getting the shape. [chuckles]

[Christina] Can I put--

The structural integrity is questionable.

[Christina] Okay. So you want to hold it

kind of like a diamond.

[Susan] Yeah.

And then think about just having the corners

of the diamond meet and cross over each other, you know,

look it's like this, and you're kind of going like this.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, like you're giving yourself a hug.

Yeah, weirdly, that's like the best way I can think of

to explain it.

Yeah.

And now that I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh,

that makes a lot of sense.

Should we take a pause from the cone?

Should we do a log first--

[Susan] Sure lets do a log first.

to like build some confidence?

I feel very confident,

But the log is a lot more straightforward. Right?

You're kind of putting rice right down the middle.

[Susan] Are you leaving a border on the edges?

[Christina] Yeah, just a little bit

because it's going to make it easier to close up in the end.

A little bit of egg ribbon all the way through.

And then from here, I'm going to start with the end

that's close to me and just roll it up into

a neat little log. Again, you can sort of do that same thing

where you just take a dab of rice to close up the seem

like a little sticker. And that's the role.

Now, it kind of has held itself shut. Okay.

Cheers.

Mm-hmm.

Mine is so salty.

Mine is a little bit more subdued.

But what we've been talking about this whole time, right?

With something like this,

I'm actually really glad in the end.

That's so much of that savoriness is coming through--

Yeah

Because we took the time to season so many of those

individual components properly, aggressively.

From the tuna, you have the saltiness, obviously the kimchi.

May I make you one of my cones?

Yes, may I make you one of mine?

[Christina] Yes, please.

[Susan] I love the combination that we're doing.

Like yours has got a lot of like saltiness too.

And this is you get all the flavors,

but it's a little bit more subdued.

[Christina] Okay, this is less beautiful

than my previous cone forgive me.

[Susan] I don't want to hear the excuses. What?

[Laughing]

Okay.

I feel like--

Just pick it up from the bottom, okay?

I feel like you feel, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel like you feel like you're the bad student.

I feel like I'm the bad teacher.

No, I do not. No, the student has become the teacher.

Thanks Suze.

[Susan] Thank you. All right. This is, this is beautiful.

[Christina] Mm-hmm.

Mm.

This is very good. I mean, I love the egg.

This is the bomb. This is really the bomb.

Your pickles turn out amazing.

It's a nice counterbalance.

Well, thank you so much for doing this with me.

This made this, this was so fun.

It's so fun. It's so delicious.

It's the perfect summer thing.

Should we, should we hug ourselves

since we can't hug each other?

Let's hug ourselves like a cone.

Remember. Like this.

When we make the cone.

You go like this and then you go like this.

Like this.

[Laughing]

Okay, we became the cones.

Do you ever do the thing where you go

and get like a burrito at Chipotle

and then they start rolling it up and you're just looking

and your like oh my god.

Yeah, where you're like, oh, I've overdone it.

Are you worried about--

[Christina] It's just like they get to the first roll,

and you're like, oh no, everything everything's going wrong.

Yeah, but I feel like also they're so seasoned and pro

that they're like, we've seen worse and they,

they get it in there.

I know I get so embarrassed. So I'm just like ah. Yeah,

that's the role. Not the role that we're doing today but

[Susan] Yeah.

It's a good role.

[Susan] Yeah. Yes. [chuckles]