What is a sushi rolling mat?

Sushi rolls are made using rolling mats. Bamboo mats are called “makisu” and they are used to make “makizushi” or more commonly “maki.”

There are 2 different types of bamboo mats – one has little round pieces of bamboo while the other has bamboo with one rounded and one flat side. The different shapes are used to make different shaped sushi. The rounded mat is used for round shaping and the flat mat for a square shape.

How to cover your mat

When making uramaki, or inside-out sushi rolls, the rice usually sticks to the rolling mat. To stop this from happening, we can wrap the rolling mat in plastic. To try to be as environmentally friendly as possible, I put one of my bamboo mats in a large ziplock bag and use this when making any kind of sushi roll with rice on the outside.

I used to wrap the mat in plastic seran wrap but it was such a waste of plastic and I really struggled to make the plastic tight enough. There were always loose pieces of plastic flapping around the place. When using a ziplock bag, you don’t have bits of plastic flapping around and you can wash the bag and re-use it for next time.

I recently came across an even MORE environmentally/time friendly option – the Hasegawa mat, which is a plastic mat and so requires no plastic wrap. It can also be chucked in the dishwasher to clean. I will buy one soon and report back!

Here is an uramaki roll before it has been flipped over on the mat. You can see the mat is inside a ziplock bag.

Once I have finished making the roll, you can see that no rice is stuck to the mat. Genius, I know ha ha.