Gluten-Free California Roll Recipes (Safe for School Lunches)

The tricky thing about sushi is this: how safe can it be, when you send it to school with your kiddo? I mean, you never know what a kid might do: forget to put the cold pack in her lunch, take stuff out for a quick snack during recess, etc... So can you really trust your kid with raw fish? Probably not.

So I make my California rolls with canned tuna. It's not a perfect alternative, but it's safer than raw fish. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

• Nori (flat seaweed sheets)
• sticky rice
• your child's favorite veggies (carrots, cabbage, zucchini), finely diced
• ginger, very finely diced
• scrambled egg leftovers
• Tamari sauce
• canned tuna, drained
• 2 Tbsp. water
• 1/4 tsp. xanthan gum

Directions:

1. Have all your ingredients close by, because once the sticky rice is on the Nori sheet, it softens the Nori sheet. The longer it takes you to make this, the softer the sheet gets. And when the Nori is really soft, it tears. So you want to work quickly.
2. Mix xanthan gum and water in a small dish and set aside.
3. If you have a bamboo mat, lay your Nori out on that, shiny-side down. If you don't have a bamboo mat, wax paper can work as a substitute.
4. Plop two heaping tablespoons full of sticky rice onto your Nori sheet. Spread the rice very thin, using the back of the tablespoon (a lot like spreading pizza sauce onto a pizza crust). You may need more rice than that. Keep adding rice until you have enough to cover the entire Nori sheet in a thin, 1/4 inch layer of rice.
5. One half inch from the edge of the Nori, spread veggies, egg, and tuna in a long strip. On the opposite edge of the Nori, brush the edge with the xanthan gum/water mixture.
6. Roll strip tightly (like rolling up a sleeping bag), starting at the veggie edge and working your way to the xanthan gum edge. Place the roll in the fridge for at least an hour. (You want the sticky xanthan gum/water mixture to solidify, so that may take longer if your fridge has a higher humidity.)
7. With a very sharp knife, slice the roll into 1-inch cakes. Sprinkle tops of cakes with Tamari sauce.