Lazy Tuna Sushi
If you like the taste of sushi and enjoy forming musubi you’ll love this “Lazy Tuna Sushi” recipe because it’s the best of both worlds.
Years ago I had a neighbor who called this recipe ”Poor Man’s Sushi”. I didn’t like calling it that so I changed the name and added egg then wrapped it in nori!
Lazy Tuna Sushi
The Rice
- 3 cups cooked Japanese rice
- 1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
- 2 Tbsps sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 cups water
Heat the vinegar, sugar, salt and water until the sugar is dissolved. Place semi-cooled rice in a shallow pan and pour the mixture evenly over the rice then mix lightly until almost cooled. Update: This may be too much liquid for this amount of rice. Just add slowly until you get flavor without over-wetting the rice. It depends on how moist your rice is after it cooks. Hope that helps.
The Tuna
- 1 can of tuna (oil or water, just drain it well)
- 1 tablespoon shoyu (soy sauce) or more to taste
In a medium-hot, non-stick skillet, heat the tuna along with the shoyu, stirring constantly to break up the chunks into flakes. Update: keep stirring on over the heat until fairly dry as you do not want to add more moisture to the rice.
Optional Egg
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon mirin
Beat the egg with the mirin then scramble into fine bits.
Optional nori
Cut strips of nori into desired width.
Assembly:
Combine the tuna, egg and rice. Shape into desired shape and size. I like doing triangle shape…musubi style as it’s quick to form with my bare hands. Wrap in nori if desired.
You can omit either the egg or tuna. Try it with canned salmon too! Don’t make the rice balls too big…one, two or even three bites is big enough. This recipe will yield 12-15 pieces of “Lazy Sushi”.
I’ve decorated mine with black sesame seeds and served with beni shoga. But you could also add cooked peas or edamame.
This “sushi” is bento-able. Meaning…there is no raw fish involved so it’s okay to pack then eat later. The vinegar and salt will slow the growth of bacteria. But always use common sense and safe food handling for all your bento lunches.
I packed some “Lazy Tuna Sushi” in a bento for our house guests as an in-flight meal.
Well, you know I love anything called “lazy”, hehe!
Mixing in to flavor all the rice is a fine idea!
Hi sheri, Lazy is good.
haha.. i love lazy menu, too!
Hi prince n princess mum! Thanks!
I do something similar but with just tuna, the egg idea is intruiging – gonna try this out with canned pink salmon! Love lazy ideas
Oh yes! I love this … Thanks for sharing the recipe. Bookmark this now
Great detailed recipe, fast and elegant…looking forward to trying this
This sounds so yummy. My girls love sticky rice but can not get them to eat tuna…maybe now I can! Thanks for the recipe!!
Mmmm…this looks really good. I was on bento hiatus for awhile but now I’m back and looking for new things to try!
Hi! I’m new to your site and have been enjoying all the wonderful recipes and ideas. I will try this lazy tuna recipe. Thank you for this great idea.
Wow, lazy never looked so good! Very delicious looking, thanks for sharing your recipe!
Believe it or not I totally love the name ‘poor mans sushi’ it totally cracked me up xD
Just wondering since you didn’t specify, the canned tuna you used was it in oil or water?
Thanks for the recipe!! Cant wait to try it out
Hi Lufflee, I’m so happy to hear that you’ll try the recipe. It doesn’t matter which kind of tuna you use as long it’s drained well. Thanks for asking…I’ll add a note to the recipe.
Yay. It’s me again. I tried to recipe today but just noticed the huge water amount. Im just wondering if you meant the 3 cups water for cooking the rice and only like the 1/4 to add when cooked (with vingear and stuff). I only added a little but it seemed more than enough. Im not sure if this was an error or not but i didnt want to completely drench the rice to make rice soup lol.
Aside from that, it tasted really good. I would have never thought of mixing soy sauce and tuna over a frying pan xD
Hi Lufflee,
OMG! I’m so sorry, that was a typo, and it should of read 1/4 cup of water only. I’m a horrible writer and I cook off the top of my head. Thanks for catching that!
aw dont say that~! You’re recipe was lovely!!! It’s no problem, I was kind of hesitant on commenting because I felt for a second that I might have followed the recipe wrong (Somehow cooking and me dont seem to mix xD)
i agree with everyone above, lazy doesn’t mean lack of flavor or thought, just means streamlining the best flavors into a simple and do-able preparation. this looks amazing, can’t wait to try it!
Hi Debra
I just tried out these lazy sushi and they didn´t turn out as pretty as yours but very tasty 
I linked you back if you wanna take a peak check here http://andromedaskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/07/lazy-tuna-sushi-bento.html
Hi Thuri, You’re so sweet to link back to my article. I’ve updated the instructions in case some people’s cooked rice is very wet. The idea is use the liquid to flavor the rice, not saturate it. So thanks for calling this out to me.
Thank you Debra
I´ve never done this before so I followed the recepie 
and ofcourse I linked back – love your blog