Oshizushi literally means “pressed sushi.” Sushi is shaped in a mold. Traditionally, a wooden mold is used to make “oshizushi” but it can be made with any containers or even with a milk carton.
My mom used to make oshizushi with canned tuna. Tuna was seasoned and salty and slightly sweet. Shiso leaves were in between sushi rice.
I am going to use young (green) jackfruit to replace tuna and make vegan version of my mom’s oshizushi today.
I’ll show you step-by-step instructions (they will be long!) but the shorter version of the recipe and a list of the ingredients are available at the bottom of this post. Let’s begin!
- Prepare seasoned sushi. You can use brown or white short grain rice. I am using brown rice today. I posted how to make sushi rice.
2. Drain jackfruit and boil for 1 hour. Repeat. This helps remove the funky taste and smell of canned jackfruit. Drain and rinse well. Drain.
3. Remove pods, cut off tough skin and shred. Pad dry with paper towel.
4. Heat a pan and add oil. When oil gets hot, add jackfruit and seasoning. Continue stirring.
After a while, you can see the color gets darker and it becomes drier.
5. Cook until jackfruit gets dry (not completely dry but until it’s no longer watery).
6. Steam peeled and cut kabocha squash until you can put a skewer through it easily.
7. Combine steamed kabocha squash, seasoning and water in a food processer. Add water gradually. Test the batter by cooking a small amount on a pan. Adjust water to get the consistency of crepe.
8. Cook the kabocha mixture like crepe. The batter gets cooked quickly so you need to pour and spread the batter quickly.
After a couple of minutes, flip over to cook both sides.
Dry it on a rack to prevent it becoming moist.
One side looks smoother and the other side looks rough but it doesn’t matter because we’ll cut it into thin strips.
9. After kabocha crepe cools down, cut it into thin strips. Traditionally, this is made with eggs and called “kinshi tamago” which means thread made of eggs.
10. Cut shiso leaves into small thin strips.
11. Line the mold with parchment paper.
I am using the mold that the bottom part comes out. You can use any molds.
12. Put kabocha strips, sushi rice, shiso leaf strips, jackfruit tuna and rice in these order. When adding rice and jackfruit, press them to remove any air.
First, kabocha.
Then, sushi rice. Make sure you press rice with your fingers.
Then, shiso leaves.
Then, jackfruit tuna. Press it with your fingers.
Then, sushi rice again. Press rice with your fingers again.
13. Cover rice and put something heavy on top and wait for an hour or longer.
I used some rocks.
After an hour, it is pressed more.
14. Flip over and cut into pieces.
It’s kind of like a “sushi sandwich.” You can use any ingredients you like to make this but I like this “tuna” version which reminds me of my childhood.
It’s bit time-consuming to make this so I like to make more than what I eat for one meal. I tightly wrap it and store it in the fridge without cutting it. When I eat it, I’ll leave it out to make it at the room temperature and cut it.
Since this is my mom’s creation, you are not going to find this at any Japanese restaurants whether it’s a vegan version or a non-vegan version. I hope you give it a try.
- *Jackfruit tuna
- 1 20 oz.(567g) can jackfruit
- 2 teaspoons soy source
- 4 teaspoons mirin (Japanese cooking wine)
- 1 teaspoon coconut sugar
- ½ teaspoon neutral vegetable oil
- *Eggless kinshi tamago
- 50g (1.8 oz.) kabocha squash (after removing skin and seeds)
- 6 tablespoon rice flour
- 1 teaspoon mirin
- 80 cc water
- pinch of salt
- *Others
- 2 cups seasoned sushi rice
- 10 shiso leaves
- 10 shiso leaves
- Prepare seasoned sushi. You can use brown or white short grain rice. I posted how to make sushi rice.
- Drain jackfruit and boil for 1 hour. Repeat. This helps remove funky taste and smell of canned jackfruit. Drain and rinse well. Drain.
- Remove pods, cut off tough skin and shred. Pad dry with paper towel.
- Heat a pan and add oil. When oil gets hot, add jackfruit and seasoning. Continue stirring.
- Cook until jackfruit gets dry (not completely dry but until it's no longer watery).
- Steam kabocha squash until you can put a skewer through easily.
- Combine steamed kabocha squash, seasoning and water in a food processer. Add water gradually. Test the batter by cooking a small amount on a pan. Adjust water to get the consistency of crepe.
- Cook the kabocha mixture like crepe. The batter gets cooked quickly so you need to pour and spread the batter quickly.
- After kabocha crepe cools down, cut it into thin strips.
- Cut shiso leaves into small thin strips.
- Line the mold with parchment paper.
- Put kabocha strips, sushi rice, shiso leaf strips, jackfruit tuna and rice in these order. When adding each layer, push the ingredients to remove any.
- Put something heavy on top and wait for an hour or longer.
- Flip over and cut into pieces.
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