8 Best Sushi Making Kits of 2026, Tested at Home

Two bamboo mats, a rice paddle, a spreader, five pairs of chopsticks and a beginner guide — no knife, no bazooka, no molds, and the cheapest kit here. Read that list again and the trade looks smart rather than stingy, because the mat is the tool that decides whether a roll holds together, and everything else in the box supports it. If you want to learn to roll by hand rather than press a tube, start here.

The mats arrive coated, and that coating is doing real work. Bare bamboo drinks in rice starch and can go musty if it is put away damp; a sealed surface gives you a lot more slack. They are still hand wash only and slow to dry, so ours sit on a rack overnight and go back in the cupboard in the morning. If you would rather not wash them after every session, a zip-top bag slipped over the mat keeps the rice off it.

The guide is the other half of what your money buys. It covers rice, rolling pressure and a handful of fillings, pitched at someone who has never wrapped nori around anything, and it is the sort of thing that saves you two ruined batches before the third one works. Add a knife from your own block and this covers a full sushi night for two or four. What it will not do is press a tube or stamp nigiri — for those, look further up this list.

Everything goes back into its own gift box, which measures 10 by 4 by 4 inches — about the size of a hardback — and there is a cotton bag for the mats and the loose pieces. That sounds like a small point until you try to store two bamboo mats, a bazooka, five pairs of chopsticks and a knife in a kitchen drawer that already has opinions.

Two mats, a bazooka, a knife, an avocado slicer, five chopsticks with rests, a rice paddle, a spreader, two sauce dishes and a printed instruction booklet: for the money this is the most complete kit here after our top pick. We rate it the best of the group for a small kitchen, and the sauce dishes do more than they look like they will, turning a countertop session into something you can carry to the table.

It is bamboo and food-grade plastic like the rest of the midrange kits, so go gently on the bazooka’s clips when you close it and dry the mats flat rather than stacking them damp. If you want nigiri and onigiri as well as rolls, the 28-in-1 from the same maker adds the molds for a little more money.

The molds are what separate this from the roll-only kits: a nigiri mold, a gunkan mold, a musubi press, a triangle onigiri mold and a rice ball mold, sitting alongside two bamboo mats, a bazooka, a knife, five chopsticks with rests and a printed user guide.

We liked the molds more than we expected to. Rolls depend on your technique improving; a mold does not. Press the rice, turn it out, top it, and you have nigiri on the plate next to the maki, which is the difference between a bowl of homemade rolls and something that looks like a sushi night. Two mats, the tube and five molds in one box make this the most versatile kit here.

It is boxed and bagged like the 22-in-1, hand wash only, and a few of the 28 pieces will live at the bottom of the box — the basting brush and the spare chopsticks, in our case. What the extra money buys is the mold set, and if nigiri is the point of the exercise, that is money well spent.

A rice cooker inside a sushi kit sounds like padding until you have made sushi rice badly. Rice is half the roll: it needs rinsing until the water runs clear, cooking firm rather than fluffy, and seasoning while it is still warm. The small corded cooker in this box switches itself from cook to warm when it is done, so you can start the rice and lay out the mats without minding a pot.

The other 26 pieces are pitched at serving as much as making: a wooden board, a melamine dish, two sauce bowls, four chopstick sets and rests, plus the bazooka, a bamboo mat, a silicone mat, eight sushi molds, onigiri, nigiri and musubi molds, a knife, a julienne peeler, an avocado slicer, a basting brush, two squeeze bottles and a recipe book.

We think it is the kit to buy when sushi night is a household event rather than a solo experiment: the rice is handled, the sauces have bottles, and the table is set for four out of one box. The premium price buys convenience and serving ware rather than better rolls — a plain mat still makes the tightest maki — so it earns its place on the nights you are feeding people, not on a quiet Tuesday.

The tube is the reason to look at this one: rice and fillings go in, the plunger presses, and a roll of even diameter comes out — exactly the sort of job a child can do without crushing anything. Around it the box adds a knife, two bamboo mats, an avocado slicer, a silicone brush, four chopsticks with rests and a chopsticks bag, and the bazooka can go in the dishwasher while the mats cannot.

The knife is properly sharp, which means it is an adult tool in a kit you might hand to a nine-year-old, and the two mats let you roll by hand once the tube’s single diameter starts to feel samey. The bamboo is decent quality with no splintering on ours, and the avocado slicer is the sleeper piece — it turns the messy part of a sushi night into a two-second job.

For a family that wants the kids involved, this is the kit we point to. The tube contains the mess, the chopstick rests stop the table turning into a cutlery pile, and the mats are waiting for the day someone wants to learn to roll properly rather than press.

There are no instructions in the box, and the bazooka is not self-explanatory the first time you pick it up. The parts are all there — tube, two mats, a knife in a scabbard, paddle, spreader, five chopsticks and five panda holders, plus nigiri, onigiri and musubi molds — but your first roll comes after a few minutes of video.

The molds are the interesting part. A musubi press and an onigiri mold do jobs the roll-only kits here cannot, and the panda holders make the box feel like a gift rather than a utensil order. The knife stores in its own scabbard, which is the right call in a kit aimed at beginners, because it is the one sharp piece and it travels covered.

Everything else is mid-pack in a good way: ordinary bamboo mats, a serviceable knife, plastic that does its job. The small panda holders are the pieces to keep track of, since they are the sort of thing that ends up in a drawer. Nothing here is precious, and nothing feels like it will fail on the second use.

It costs about what our top pick costs and gives you molds instead of a cookbook, which is the trade in one line. We rate it a strong alternative for anyone who wants nigiri and musubi in the same box, as long as you are happy learning from a video rather than a page.

There is no rolling involved in most of this kit. Eleven plastic molds press rice into hearts, squares, circles and triangles, a small fork-style knife and a bamboo mat cover the rest, and every piece is BPA-free plastic. If your idea of sushi is a nori-wrapped log, this is the wrong box for you.

The molds are forgiving in a way mats are not: rice in, press, turn out, and the shape is there whether or not your technique is. Hearts for Valentine’s, triangles for a lunch box, squares for a party plate — it is the only kit here built for shaped rice rather than rolls, and it is the one I hand to a child who wants to help.

Expect thick, blocky pieces rather than thin maki. The molds press a generous mouthful, and the fork-style knife is for lifting and serving, not for slicing a roll cleanly — keep a real knife within reach if you are making anything with nori on the outside. The plastic wipes clean easily and there is nothing here that needs careful drying.

We think it earns a place as a second kit or a party kit rather than the only one in the cupboard: it cannot do the tight hand-rolled maki that the mats here can, and the money sits close to kits that do more. For kids and shaped bites, though, nothing else in this group comes close.