What to do with leftovers? Soup? Nah. Stew? Nah. Feed it to the dog? Don’t have one. I know! How about sushi-ing them?

Sushi works great with almost anything and besides your leftovers, all you need on hand is:

sticky rice

sushi nori (seaweed paper)

rice vinegar

sugar and salt to taste

soy sauce and/or pickled ginger and/or wassabi sauce, and/or toasted sesame seeds (none of these is necessary)

The beauty is that all of these items can just be in your pantry, ready to be pulled out at any time with almost any leftover.

This time I was trying to us e up some smoked salmon that I have been using lately on salads, I also had some cream cheese, avocado, and cucumber. However, I have done sushi with chicken, pork, steak, boiled eggs, and any number of veggies, including peppers, carrots and sweet potato fries.

Sushi can also be spiced up with whatever sauces you have on hand. I used a teriyaki sauce on one and a hot sauce on another.

Hint: If you don’t like your sushi chewy and want more middle instead of all that rice, just cut the nori in half and only roll the sushi once in the rice. This time I decided that more rice was what we needed as we did not have a ton of filling for the middle.

Steps:

cook rice according to sticky rice package

add about 1/4 c rice vinegar for every 3 cooked cups of rice

add salt and sugar to taste

cover nori (again, cut if desired) with thin layer of rice, except the last inch

put a line of ‘inside’ stuff opposite your inch you left uncovered

roll towards the inch uncovered (you don’t need a sushi mat. Up to about a year ago I used a place mat)

wet the last inch of nori and stick it to the roll to seal it.

cut into six pieces with a wet knife

et voila!

Have you made leftovers into sushi?