Pack the seaweed separately

The single best trick for packing sushi lunch is to keep the nori off the rice until you’re ready to eat.

The whole problem is moisture. Wet rice turns nori into a rubber band, and dry rice turns into hard pellets. So the fix is to control when those two meet. Buy those little roasted nori sheets meant for onigiri, keep them in their sealed bag, and wrap your roll or rice ball at your desk. Five seconds of work, and the seaweed is still crispy.

The actual pro move, though, is to skip rolls entirely and pack a chirashi bowl. Sushi rice, sliced fish or cooked toppings, a little soy sauce and pickled ginger on the side. It’s essentially sushi deconstructed, so nothing falls apart, nothing gets soggy, and it forgives a bumpy commute. This is what you should do if you’re packing lunch for work more than once a week.

If you’re stuck packing a pre-made roll with nori already on it, wrap the whole thing in a slightly damp paper towel inside a container. That keeps the rice from hardening overnight, but the nori will be chewy no matter what. It’s the one thing you can’t fix, so just accept it.

Your lunch doesn’t need to survive the commute in perfect roll form — it just needs to taste like sushi.