Category:Sushi Recipes

The California roll is a maki-zushi (roll), a kind of sushi, usually made inside-out, containing cucumber, imitation crab stick, and avocado. Sometimes crab salad is substituted for the crab stick, and often the outer layer of rice (in an inside-out roll) is sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds or tobiko.

The origin of the California roll is somewhat murky, but usually food historians credit Ichiro Mashita, sushi chef at the Tokyo Kaikan in Los Angeles with inventing the roll in the early 1970s. Mashita realized the oily texture of avocado was a perfect substitute for toro. He also eventually made the roll "inside-out", i.e. uramaki, because Americans did not like seeing and chewing the nori on the outside of the roll.

On July 20, 2005, a Japanese entertainer and tourism ambassador of California, Gori of Garage Sale, in his popular disguise of a girl named Gorie, made the world's longest California roll in Hollywood. Tourists from Japan helped him make the roll, which reached 30 meters in length. more