Sushi Bake for Those Who Can’t Cook

MY VERY OWN SUSHI BAKE. I call it…. Golden Baked California Madness.

When someone tells you making a sushi bake on your own is easy, DO NOT BE FOOLED. Yes, it’s “easy” to make but it takes SO DAMN LONG (3 hours to be exact). To be fair, I’m a total noob in the kitchen though, so maybe it’ll take you half the time.

Having said that, is it worth it? After long and careful consideration, yes it was. Not least because I saved A TON OF MONEY making my own sushi bake vs purchasing outside. Equally important, I tailored it to my taste and made sure no skimping happened so you can be damn sure this sushi bake was chock full of ingredients I like (kani, mango and cucumber = California roll).

Ready to rock and roll? I know I am.

DELECTABLE FOOD FOR THE DAY: GOLDEN BAKED CALIFORNIA MADNESS (More commonly known as, California Roll Sushi Bake)

DIFFICULTY: Easy, even an 8-year old can do it

SERVING SIZE: Good for 12 people (this is a 20 x 8 sushi bake tray). If you’re cooking for less, you can straight up just decrease the ingredients proportionately

PREPARATION AND BAKING TIME: 3 hours (for beginners)

TOTAL COST: PHP 840 (~PHP 70 per person)

INGREDIENTS:

6 cups of Japanese rice

Ingredients for the substitute rice (if you’re too cheap to buy Japanese rice, like me):

• 6 cups of normal rice (freshly cooked)
• 4 tablespoons of sesame seed oil
• 1/3 cup of rice vinegar

Ingredients for the toppings:

• 16 sticks of kani (I just used normal hotpot kani, but you’re supposed to use premium kani. Tastes the same to me, to be honest. Just go for the cheaper one)
• 6 medium sized (VERY RIPE) mangoes
• 1 large cucumber
• **If you were making legit sushi bake, you’d need furikake and the roe – BUT no one has those ingredients readily available in their kitchen (I know I don’t), so we’re skipping those for today. As far as I’m concerned, they’re a nice to have but definitely not a requirement

Ingredients for the sauce:

• 8 ounce / 1 bar of melted cream cheese (place these outside the refrigerator AT LEAST 8 hours before you start, so it’s nice and melted by the time you need it)
• 1 1/2 cup of Japanese mayo

 

PROCEDURE:

STEP 1: Prepare your toppings. (1 hour)

1. First, you need to prepare a BIG BOWL. This is where you’re going to place ALL your toppings once they’re all chopped up / sliced.

2. Prep your kani. The key here is you want these kani to be shredded. How finely shredded is up to you. Tip: I press down on the kani so it starts unraveling, I then start slicing and dicing until they become these tiny cubes. Don’t sweat it if they’re not all equally shredded. Once that’s done, transfer to the big bowl.

3. Prep your mango. First, you have to slice the mango and get rid of the seed. Try to retain as much flesh as possible. Afterwards, get rid of the skin, then you can slice into thin strips. Once that’s done, transfer to the big bowl

4. Prep your cucumber. Take out the skin, then use a cucumber peel slicer to get nice strips. You can cut these into smaller strips if you’d like. I find this part very therapeutic

STEP 2: Prepare your sauce. (1 hour)

1. Honestly, this would’ve taken less time if my cream cheese was nice and melted by the time I got to this step… But alas, it wasn’t. This is what it looked like. Maybe I should’ve popped it into the microwave so it could melt more? No idea, I’ll try that next time

2. Place 1 1/2 cup of Japanese mayo into the bowl

3. MIX MIX MIX. Keep mixing until there are no noticeable cream cheese chunks left in the bowl. This took me soooo long, because my cream cheese was so chunky (?).

4. Place all the toppings in and continue mixing. SOBRA NAPAGOD KAMAY KO – specifically my wrist. Anyway, I was watching the Meteor Garden 2 rerun while mixing, so it was all good. But bah, the acting in Meteor Garden 2 was so bad? How could I stand this show when I was a kid?! I guess my standards have improved LOL (or maybe not, since I did end up rewatching the MG rerun…)

STEP 3: Prepare your Japanese rice (10 minutes)

1. If you’re using the real Japanese rice, then all you have to do is cook that. Done.
2. If you’re using a substitute like me, you need to place the 6 cups of freshly cooked rice onto a bowl. Place 4 tablespoons of sesame seed oil and 1/3 cup of rice vinegar. Mix like crazy!

STEP 4: Place everything into the tray (10 minutes)

1. First layer would be your Japanese rice
2. Second layer would be your toppings
3. Make sure everything is well spread out

STEP 5: Pop into the oven. My temperature setting was 175 deg C, and I kept it baking for ~20-30 minutes.

STEP 6: Serve – Bon Appetit!