If you have been putting off making vegan sushi (or maybe never even thought of making homemade vegan sushi rolls), stop it! It turns out that making vegan sushi rolls at home is really easy! Stymied for vegan sushi filling ideas? Guess what! You can use almost anything as a filling for vegan sushi! Is it authentic? Who cares! It’s delicious, and fun! We’ve used string beans, rehydrated dried sweet potato cubes, rehydrated dried mushrooms, and baby corn (because that’s what we had on hand), as well as ordering and using more traditional things such as ume (pickled plum) and tuno (vegan tuna). There’s even a vegan unagi (eel) sauce you can get to replicate vegan unagi (hey, it’s all about the sauce)! On a side note, who here remembers the ‘unagi’ episode of Friends? (Are we dating ourselves?)

We use this sushi-making starter set from Amazon, which is a complete kit and is usually on sale for under $20. This kit has literally everything that you need, including not one but two rolling mats, so you can make let someone else do it with you!

The Sushi Making Kit that We Use

Having actual sushi rice is great, but you can also use plain white rice or brown rice. Having ingredients like the ume and unagi sauce that we mentioned is cool but, again, not imperative (we’ll give you links to those things though in case you want them). But really, at the end of the day, all you need to make homemade vegan sushi is rice and sheets of nori (that’s the seaweed that is wrapped around the rolls). Everything else is optional. As for filling ideas, the only limit is your imagination.

Anything can be a sushi filling! Use your imagination!
Pictured: green beans, mushroom, red peppers, avocado, carrots

A word about rolling your own: it took us literally one roll to get the hang of making sushi rolls. It’s that easy. In fact, we hear tell that some people don’t even use a sushi rolling mat! Instead they use a dishtowel covered in plastic wrap, or they don’t use anything at all – they just plop the sheet of nori on a cutting board or countertop, put on the rice layer, add the filling, and hand-roll it! However you do it, the secret is to roll it tightly. After you put the rice layer on your nori and you start rolling it, after every half turn or so squeeze it evenly with your fingers to compress it. This is where having a sushi mat is good, because it helps you to compact the roll evenly across the whole roll. For more in-depth instructions on how to roll your sushi (it really is easy, but sometimes visuals help) see this YouTube video.

Easy Homemade Vegan Sushi