This Vegetable Maki recipe uses avocado, brown rice, cucumber, and carrot. It's the perfect pairing with steamed edamame for a complete meal. This veggie sushi roll is gluten-free, nut-free, and vegan.

What you need to make this vegetable maki meal

Edamame, frozen in the pods
Nori sheets
Cooked short grain brown rice
Avocado
Cucumber
Carrot
Sesame seeds
Reduced sodium tamari soy sauce
Wasabi

This recipe is a close cousin to the veggie sushi hand roll. I often make vegetable maki with edamame when I have leftover rice. Because the rice is the only thing that takes time to prepare. The rest are ingredients I always have in the refrigerator, pantry, and freezer.

How to prepare this meal

Start by preparing the edamame. Place frozen pods into a medium pot of boiling water. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Take two nori sheets and carefully spread ¼ cup of room temperature or slightly warmed rice across the dull side of each sheet, leaving about an inch of space at one end.

Add the sliced avocado and julienned cucumbers, and carrots. Sprinkle sesame seeds across the open rolls.

Take the end with more rice, and carefully yet tightly roll the sheets towards the end with the one-inch gap. When you get to the end of the roll, wet your fingertips and run them across the gap to help seal the roll closed. Using either a sushi rolling mat or a clean kitchen towel, gently press the roll so it's nice and firm.

While holding the roll, use a sharp knife (for me, my serrated knife works best), and carefully cut it into 5 or 6 pieces.

Prepare the wasabi paste (for heat) and soy sauce for dipping. Enjoy!

Close up view of Avocado Veggie Nori Roll open face prior to rolling. Its sitting on a wood surface next to a pair of chopsticks and a saucer of soy sauce and wasabi paste

While this recipe is for cut rolls, you can easily make this into a handroll, which I do more often than the cut roll. Admittedly, I tend to be lazy and don't want to fuss around with rolling and cutting.

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Info about the ingredients

There's so much you can do with sushi rolls. The basics are the nori sheets and whole grain, like short grain brown rice. What you fill it with can be fun to play around with.

Nori sheets

But first, let's pay homage to the nori sheets.

Nori is a type of edible dried seaweed sheet. Nori is available online and at most major grocery retailers in the Asian food section. These sheets are versatile in their use and a good source of iodine—a mineral necessary for thyroid health.

Rice

I like to use short grain brown rice because it's sticky like traditional sushi rice, but still considered a whole grain. Traditionally, sushi refers to how the rice is prepared, typically white (polished) short-grain rice, vinegar, and sugar. The term maki also refers to the roll—maki in Japanese means coiling. We're modifying the sushi rice to make it whole-food and plant-based without added sweeteners. Other whole grains you can use in this veggie roll but won't be as sticky include quinoa, red rice, black rice, and cauliflower rice.

Veggies

This recipe keeps the veggie filling simple with avocado, carrots, cucumber, and a sprinkle of black sesame seeds. You could also try avocado, mango, cucumber roll, seasoned tofu, bell pepper, and baby spinach roll. The options are almost endless.

Edamame

Edamame is a young soybean and is considered a "complete" protein, having all essential amino acids. Enjoying this with the vegetable maki makes this a complete and satisfying meal.

This recipe also includes edamame to make it more of a lunch or light dinner entrée. For other light dinner options, check out Beet and Arugula Salad and Cauliflower Steak with Butternut Squash Puree.

Gigi

May 12, 2025 at 11:31 am

Very tasty. It's like eating at a sushi bar, but you can more easily vary the ingredients.

Vegetable Maki

What you need to make this vegetable maki meal