101 in 1001: Asian Grocery Store and Making Sushi

Morgan has been hounding me to go to the Asian grocery store ever since we met. It was never that I didn’t want to go, it’s just that it is in North Charleston, so we are never up there. It’s call H&L Super Market and it is a grocery store that is purely Asian food. Morgan put it on our 101 in 1001 list, so we went, and it was definitely an experience that put us out of our element.

We had decided we wanted to try to make homemade sushi for the first time, so we had a list of ingredients from a very authentic source… Food Network’s Alton Brown. We decided we were going to make a standard California crab roll and a Philadelphia roll. When we got to the store, we realized we didn’t really know where ANY of the ingredients were (plus, we had no idea what a “crab stick” was), so we started wandering down the aisles and took pictures of the interesting things we saw.

We had a blast seeing all the varieties of sauces and rice and seafood that was available. It was truly unlike any grocery store we had ever been in before. Then we headed home for a romantic evening of making hand-crafted sushi rolls.

We had talked to a guy that works at the sushi counter at Publix and he had given us some advice about how to roll. He recommended we cut our seaweed wraps in half and then take small balls of the sushi rice and spread it out along the wrapper.

Then, for our California rolls, we laid down our finely sliced cucumber, avocado, and crab meat and tightly rolled the wraps before slicing them.

After we had gotten the hang of a couple, we went for a Philly roll and added cream cheese, ginger and sesame seeds to the mix.

In the end, we had quite the stock of freshly rolled, homemade sushi. And (SPOILER ALERT), it was delicious! We served it with soy sauce and loved it.

This was a really great way for us to spend and evening together and make a great, new meal! There really wasn’t anything difficult about this meal except for going all the way to North Charleston for the grocery store, but now we have extra seaweed wraps and can make it whenever we want.

Have you ever made homemade sushi? How did it turn out?

Sean

Hey there, I’m Sean, the woodworking enthusiast and builder behind CharlestonCrafted.com! Since 2012, I’ve been sharing the magic of turning raw materials into beautiful creations. I love teaching others the art and satisfaction of woodworking and DIY. I try to inspire fellow crafters to make something extraordinary out of nothing at all.