A field guide to 17 classic rolls. Match the cut face on your plate to a cross-section, see what’s inside and where it comes from, then roll your own.
Most rolls you’ll meet come in one of these shapes. The quickest tell is where the nori sits: outside the rice, inside it, or wrapped around it like a wall.
The thin roll, 2.5 to 3 cm across: half a sheet of nori around rice and usually a single filling. Normally cut into six pieces.
Spot it by its small size and single filling.
The thick roll, 5 cm or more across: a full sheet of nori around several colourful fillings.
Spot it by the wide, crowded middle.
The inside-out roll: rice on the outside, nori wrapped around the filling. The shape behind most Western-style rolls.
Spot it by the missing nori on the outside.
The hand roll: a cone of nori, filled and eaten by hand straight away, while the nori is still crisp.
Spot it by the cone shape; it isn’t sliced.
The “battleship” roll: a strip of nori wrapped around a small oval of rice, rising above it to hold loose toppings such as salmon roe.
Spot it by the topping piled above the nori wall.
Compare the cut face on your plate with these cross-sections, then pick one to read about it.
“No raw fish” describes the filling. Fish roe on the outside, common on California and spider rolls, isn’t cooked.
Thin rolls with one filling, and the thick futomaki. Simple combinations that let the rice, the nori and a single ingredient speak.
Crisp cucumber in rice and nori: the plainest roll on the menu, and one of the most refreshing.
A stick of lean red tuna (akami) rolled in rice and nori. Simple, and only as good as the tuna.
Soft, pink minced fatty tuna mixed with chopped green onion. Rich and melting rather than firm.
Strips of dried gourd, simmered until tender in a sweet soy mixture. The original Tokyo roll: chewy, savoury-sweet, and traditionally cut into four pieces rather than six.
A bright yellow stick of pickled daikon radish (takuan). Crunchy, salty-sweet, and a good palate cleanser.
Fermented soybeans, sticky and pungent, often with chopped green onion. Loved and avoided in equal measure.
A thick roll, 5 cm or more across, packed with cooked and seasoned fillings and sliced into thick rounds. At Setsubun in early February, many people in Japan eat one whole and uncut, as an ehomaki.
Mostly created in North American sushi bars: usually inside-out, often with avocado, mayonnaise, fried fillings or sweet sauces. Inside-out rolls are still rare in Japan itself.
The best-known inside-out roll: imitation crab, avocado and cucumber, with the rice on the outside. The earliest versions used real crab.
Smoked salmon and cream cheese, the pairing from a bagel with lox, rolled inside-out with cucumber. Smoked salmon is cured, not cooked.
Chopped raw tuna mixed with mayonnaise and chilli sauce. Creamy, with a gentle heat.
An inside-out roll draped with thin slices of avocado that overlap like scales, finished with sweet, dark eel sauce.
A California roll dressed in alternating slices of raw fish and avocado.
Grilled eel and cucumber inside, with avocado layered over the top until the whole roll turns green.
A deep-fried soft-shell crab, shell and all, rolled so its crispy legs poke out of the end pieces. That’s where the name comes from. Rarely seen in Japan.
Battered, fried shrimp with cucumber or avocado, often finished with eel sauce or spicy mayonnaise. Think of it as a dragon roll without the avocado coat.
Crisp grilled salmon skin with cucumber and a sweet sauce. The initials stand for British Columbia, the Canadian province.
Ripe avocado and rice, nothing else: mild, creamy and vegetarian.
From pressed seaweed in Edo to convenience-store rolls. Where the records disagree, the entry says so.
Makers in Edo, today’s Tokyo, start pressing seaweed into thin sheets on frames, borrowing the method of local papermakers. Accounts date it anywhere from the late 1600s to the 1770s. Sold as Asakusa nori, it is the ancestor of every sheet used today.
The word makizushi first appears in print, in Ryori Sankaikyo, a cookbook published in Kyoto. Its roll is not the rice-and-nori kind: it is cured fish rolled up with grated daikon.
A cookbook describes rice and fish laid on a bamboo blind lined with nori and rolled up: the first recognisable sushi roll in print.
Morisada Manko, a record of everyday life, notes that in Edo rolls are called norimaki and hold nothing but kanpyo.
Kyubey, a sushi restaurant in Ginza, says its founder created the gunkanmaki, a nori wall around rice, to hold soft sea urchin.
Inside-out rolls appear in North America. Los Angeles and Vancouver both claim the first California roll.
Sugiyo, a fish-cake maker in Ishikawa Prefecture, launches the first crab-flavoured kamaboko, forerunner of the imitation crab in today’s California rolls.
The spicy tuna roll and the Philadelphia roll join American sushi menus.
Seven-Eleven sells ehomaki for Setsubun in its stores across Japan, turning an Osaka custom into a national one.
You need a bamboo rolling mat, a sharp knife, nori and well-seasoned rice. Start with thin rolls: one filling, half a sheet of nori, and very little that can go wrong.
For 300 g of uncooked rice (2 Japanese rice-cooker cups)
Recipes vary. The vinegar maker Mizkan uses 3 tbsp of vinegar for the same amount of rice, and some cooks add more sugar. Taste and adjust.
Six pieces of kappa maki or tekka maki from one half sheet of nori.
Lay the bamboo mat flat, slats running across, and put half a sheet of nori on it, shiny side down. Keep a bowl of water with a splash of vinegar nearby for your hands.
With damp hands, spread a thin, even layer of rice over the nori, leaving a finger-wide strip bare along the far edge. Press lightly; packed rice turns heavy.
Lay a single line of filling across the middle of the rice: a cucumber stick, a strip of tuna, a stick of pickled daikon.
Lift the near edge of the mat and roll it over the filling until the nori meets the rice on the far side. Squeeze gently along the length, then roll forward to seal the bare strip.
Wipe a sharp knife with a damp cloth. Cut the roll in half, then each half into three, wiping the blade between cuts.
Cover the mat with cling film. Spread rice over a whole half sheet of nori and sprinkle it with sesame seeds, then flip the sheet so the nori faces up. Add the filling, roll as above, and cut into eight.
Buy fish sold for eating raw. Freezing kills parasites, though not bacteria: EU rules require −20 °C for at least 24 hours or −35 °C for 15 hours, and US FDA guidance −20 °C for 7 days. A home freezer usually runs at about −18 °C. The FDA advises pregnant women, young children, older adults and anyone with a weakened immune system to avoid raw fish. Eat sushi the day you make it, and don’t leave it out for more than two hours.
A few customs worth knowing. None of them should stop you enjoying your food.
Words you’ll meet on menus and in recipes.
Facts on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. Where accounts disagree, the entry says so.
Planning a sushi bar, a delivery service, a recipe app or a food brand? This domain is listed on Efty, which handles the payment and the domain transfer.