Sometimes, TikTok food trends can be a bit confusing — who has time to make coffee every morning anyway, and should you really be eating an entire block of feta cheese for dinner? Other times, food experts on TikTok share incredible recipes that make it easy to figure out what you want for dinner, and these trends tend to really stick. If you're on TikTok, you'll probably see a video showing you how to make a "sushi bake" sometime in 2022. Here's everything you should know about the (surprisingly easy) popular meal.
The #sushibake hashtag has been viewed 119.2 million times on TikTok and counting, and has been used to showcase the viral recipe since December 2021. User @lizzymwong posted a video on December 28, 2021, explaining how to DIY sushi baking at home. Liz's original recipe featured imitation crab, rice, Kewpie mayonnaise, mustard, cream cheese, scallions, rice vinegar, salt, sugar, furikake, and sriracha sauce, but in this iteration of the dish, a different ingredients to bring them together.
Read on to learn how to create a viral sushi bake, including which ingredients to buy, how to combine them and what substitutions you can make to your liking.
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What is TikTok viral sushi bake?
Essentially, a sushi bake is a casserole-like dish that uses ingredients commonly found in sushi rolls, like imitation crab, spicy mayo, rice, and cream cheese. Imitation crab is cut into small pieces, sometimes mixed with cream cheese, then spread over seasoned rice and baked until warm. Many users serve the finished product with seaweed to create their own hot sushi roll flavor.
How to Make Sushi Bake
As with any other recipe, you can adjust the baking level of your sushi based on what you like to eat. For example, user @gaming_foodie added air-fried salmon fillets and a layer of seaweed to her sushi bake, rather than just leaving it on the side.
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Generally speaking, you'll want rice, imitation crab, mayonnaise (Kewpie or regular), Sriracha sauce, and seaweed. For extra creaminess, you can add cream cheese to the crab mixture, and for more protein, you can add some cooked salmon. After placing the layers in the casserole, bake at 380 degrees for 10 minutes and then a few more minutes to get a nice layer of crunch. The sesame seeds and scallions are technically optional, but serve as garnishes to add a little flavor and texture to the final bite.
For a version that uses just seven ingredients, try this one from Recipesooking.net. If you prefer something heartier, I Am A Food Blog offers sushi baked with cucumber and avocado. Take what you like about every recipe you see online, change the parts you don’t like, and then go ahead and film your cooking to post on TikTok if you want to — who’s to say you can’t Be the next one to do it? Going viral for showing off their sushi bakes? You'll never know unless you try.
