Sushi Bake with Kani & Spicy Mayo
All the flavor of a spicy kani roll, none of the rolling: a layered rice casserole you broil until golden and scoop up with crisp nori squares.
A sushi bake is a deconstructed spicy kani roll scaled up to feed a crowd: a base of seasoned sushi rice, a creamy topping of shredded crab sticks bound with kewpie mayo and cream cheese, browned under the broiler, and eaten by scooping spoonfuls onto crisp squares of nori. It emerged from Filipino potluck culture around 2020 and stuck because it solves rolling — the only hard part of sushi — while feeding eight people for roughly the cost of two restaurant rolls. One pound of imitation crab, a pot of rice, and a jar of mayo is most of the bill.
Ingredients (9×13 dish, serves 8)
- 2 cups short-grain sushi rice + 2½ cups water
- 3 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt
- 1 lb imitation crab sticks, hand-shredded into strands (brand picks)
- ¾ cup kewpie mayonnaise + 4 oz softened cream cheese
- 1–2 tbsp sriracha and 1 tsp soy sauce
- 3 tbsp furikake (rice seasoning), divided
- 2 scallions, sliced; roasted seaweed snack sheets for scooping
Method
- Rice layer. Cook the rice, fold in the vinegar-sugar-salt seasoning while hot, and press it into an even layer in the dish with a damp spatula. Sprinkle with half the furikake.
- Kani layer. Shred the crab sticks by hand into strands — the same technique that makes kani salad work; strands soak up the sauce, chopped coins don't. Mix with the kewpie, cream cheese, sriracha, and soy sauce, and spread over the rice.
- Bake and broil. 425°F for 10–12 minutes until heated through, then 1–2 minutes under the broiler until the top is blistered with golden spots. Watch it — broilers go from golden to burnt in about thirty seconds.
- Finish. Remaining furikake and the scallions over the top. Serve hot, straight from the dish, with a stack of nori squares alongside.
The two ingredients that make it taste right
Kewpie mayo is richer than American mayo (egg yolks plus a touch of MSG) and is doing a lot of work in the topping — it's worth the bottle, which then upgrades every other recipe on this site. Furikake supplies the toasted sesame–nori savoriness that makes the dish read as sushi rather than rice casserole.
Variations and leftovers
- Milder: drop the sriracha entirely; the topping is still rich and sweet-savory.
- Toppings bar: sliced avocado, cucumber ribbons, tobiko, unagi sauce, or extra sriracha zig-zagged over the broiled top.
- Single-serving: the same layers work in ramekins — bake 8 minutes, broil 1.
Leftovers keep 3 days covered in the fridge and reheat well in the microwave (the nori, kept separate, stays crisp in its bag). The usual surimi storage rules apply to any unused crab from the package. If you'd rather have this flavor cold and crunchy, the kani cucumber salad is the lighter cousin; if you want to graduate to actual rolling, start with the California roll.
Make-ahead timeline for a party
The whole dish can be staged. The day before: cook and season the rice, press it into the dish, cover, and refrigerate; mix the kani topping separately and refrigerate that too. Two hours out: spread the topping over the cold rice and leave the dish on the counter to take the chill off. At serving time: bake 15 minutes instead of 10 (the extra 5 warms the cold rice through), then broil as written. What you shouldn't do is bake it fully in advance and hold it warm — the mayo topping slowly splits and the rice dries at the edges. Fifteen minutes in the oven while guests work on drinks is the better trade.
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