Easy Vegan Chirashi Sushi

What is Chirashi?

Chirashi Sushi is a Japanese dish consisting of a bed of sushi rice topped with a variety of ingredients.  In Japanese Chirashi means scattered.  So essentially, Chirashi Sushi is scattered ingredients on top of seasoned sushi rice. My Easy Vegan Chirashi Sushi is as tasty as it is stunning.  

In my pre-vegan days, Chirashi would be the dish I was most likely to order at a sushi restaurant. It was fresh and it was without the mayo-based sauces or fried components included in a lot of the specialty sushi rolls.  Fresh tuna, salmon, and mackerel were common components, along with a few other selections chosen by the chef.

Since becoming vegan, it has been challenging going to sushi restaurants.  Yes, I can order an avocado or cucumber roll, but my go-to dish was always Chirashi.  It is not the same experience for me, and I missed it.

Making Chirashi at Home

I started making my own sushi at home and have mastered the art of rolling the rice and ingredients in the nori (sheets made of seaweed).  It’s actually a lot of fun and not as difficult as I thought it would be.  But what I really wanted was my favorite…Chirashi Sushi!

How difficult could it be? Essentially it is similar to a deconstructed sushi roll. In all honesty, it is so much easier than making sushi rolls and I am upset with myself that I did not try this sooner!

Choosing the Vegetables for the Chirashi

Rather than tuna, salmon, or mackerel, my scattered ingredients included a variety of items that I arranged to mimic the presentation from a restaurant.  

I cut carrot, asparagus tips, and yellow bell peppers in bite-sized pieces and pickled them earlier in the day. This gave the vegetables a little more depth of flavor while keeping them crisp.  

Little vessels were made with an English cucumber by peeling the skin, removing the seeds, and filling with red seaweed pearls that I found at IKEA.  The red seaweed pearls are delicious and look and taste just like Tobiko, which is the flying fish roe you commonly find in sushi. If you don’t have an IKEA near you, I did find black seaweed pearls on Amazon.

I peeled and sliced purple yams and steamed them until cooked through.  I found the purple yams at our local Asian market and wanted to incorporate them in the Chirashi because they are known to have extraordinary health benefits.  Susan McCabe, BSc, RD published an article on Healthline’s website detailing the benefits with references to various studies.  If you are interested in knowing more about the health benefits of purple yams, you can click here to be linked to the article.  

A Roma tomato sliced lengthwise with the seeds removed and trimmed looks just like a piece of tuna.  I sprinkled the underside of the tomato pieces with a rice seasoning called Nori Komi Furikake, which essentially is a sweet and salty mixture of seaweed and sesame seeds.

All these components are placed on a bed of seasoned sushi rice along with soy sauce, wasabi, and pickled ginger.

Limited Only by Your Imagination

The options are endless with the vegetables you can use in making Chirashi Sushi.  These were the vegetable I selected for taste and color, but be creative and pick your favorites.  Next time I will likely include some variety of mushrooms, radishes, and greens, like Swiss Chard.  Scatter them over the bed of rice and enjoy!  You really have to try to mess up this Easy Vegan Chirashi Sushi!

Print Recipe

Easy Vegan Chirasha Sushi

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading...

Dinner – Asian

By Stephen R. MacNeil – Serves: 2

Prep Time: 30 minutes – Cooking Time: 45 minutes – Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Classic Japanese sushi dish, Chirashi means scattered. This Easy Vegan Chirashi Sushi can be thought of as a deconstructed sushi roll. Beautiful to view, it is even better to eat! Use your imagination as to what vegetables to use on top of the sushi rice!

Ingredients

• Rice
• 1 cup of sushi rice
• 1/3 cup of rice wine vinegar
• 1 ½ tsp of sugar
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1 tbsp of Nori Komi Furikake (optional)
• Vegetables
• 1 carrot, sliced at an angle, ¼-inch thick
• 6 to 8 asparagus stalks, trimmed to 3-inch tips
• 1 yellow bell pepper, cut into 2-inch by 1-inch pieces
• 2 purple yams, peeled, trimmed, and cut into 2-inch by 1-inch pieces, approximately 1/2 -inch thick
• 2 Roma tomatoes, cut lengthwise with the seeds removed
• 1 English cucumber, peeled, cut in half lengthwise, seeds removed and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 4 tbsp of red seaweed pearls
• Liquid to Pickle Asparagus, Carrot, and Yellow Bell Pepper
• ¾ cup of rice wine vinegar
• 1 tsp of sugar
• 1 tsp of salt
• 5 whole black peppercorns
• Accompaniments
• Soy sauce
• Wasabi paste
• Pickled ginger slices

Instructions

1

Combine the ingredients for pickling the vegetables in a saucepan.

2

Bring the rice wine vinegar to a low boil, stirring until the sugar and salt have dissolved.

3

Set pickling liquid to the side to cool down for a minute.

4

Place the carrot slices, asparagus tips, and yellow bell pepper pieces in a shallow bowl.

5

Pour the pickling liquid over the carrot, asparagus, and yellow bell pepper and then place in the refrigerator to cool.

Note that the vegetables can be pickled in advance

6

Prepare the sushi rice according to package instructions.

Note that there are slight variations in cooking time for sushi rice by different producers. Also, many have two directions for preparing the rice, standard and for use in a sushi roll. Use the standard cooking instructions.

7

Combine the 1/3 cup of rice wine vinegar, 1 ½ tsp of sugar, and 1 tsp of salt in a small bowl.

8

Stir the vinegar mixture until the sugar and salt are totally dissolved.

9

Once the sushi rice is done cooking, place the rice in a large shallow bowl.

10

Spoon the vinegar mixture over the rice and combine using a spatula or wooden spoon (Nori Komi Furikake can be added and combined at this time).

11

Set the rice aside to cool for 15 minutes.

12

Sprinkle sea salt or Nori Komi Furikake on the underneath side of the tomato

13

Steam the purple yam until it is soft enough to pierce (roughly 5 minutes but watch to prevent overcooking).

14

Fill the pieces of cucumber with the red seaweed pearls and set aside.

15

Remove the pickled vegetables from the refrigerator.

16

Transfer the rice to a shallow bowl or plate with an elevated lip, leveling the top of the rice.

17

Assemble the vegetables on top of the rice.

18

Serve with soy sauce, wasabi paste, and pickled ginger.

19

Enjoy your Easy Vegan Chirashi Sushi!