Can You Use Crab Sticks for Sushi?

Let’s find out if you can use the crab sticks for sushi, how you should cut them, and whether should you cook them additionally? If you can use them directly from the package? And what other better replacements you may have while you want to make delicious homemade sushi.

Crab sticks are a great ingredient to use in a recipe for making sushi (or sushi rolls). It takes very little skill to properly prepare sushi using crab sticks and it goes very well in combination with other ingredients.

They have a bright orange color that besides a similar taste to the crab meat, they will also get you pleasant-looking sushi.

Most often the crab sticks are used as a cheaper alternative to making your own California rolls at home.

Crab sticks can be a great replacement in sushi for eel, salmon, and other fish. It will turn out quite a competent replacement, especially if you like the taste of crab.

You can also use just crab meat (in the case of a dish, it can turn out even tastier than in the case of ordinary crab sticks, crab meat has a more natural and rather rich taste, but you should take into account the complexity when preparing sushi).

Crab sticks go well with common ingredients in sushi (or sushi rolls).

Rice, cucumber, and many other products perfectly complement the taste of crab sticks and the dish turns out to be fresh, and very tasty.

Should You Cook Them?

Usually, the crab sticks cames already pre-cooked which means that you can eat them directly from the package without additional cooking them. However, if you want to make your sushi more special, you can cook the crab sticks to give them a more interesting taste.

Quick Note: As they are already pre-cooked, pay attention that you don’t need to cook them for too long, as you may lose their texture at all.

The safest variant is to saute them a little bit on a frying pan with a little bit of oil, butter, and a few pieces of garlic cloves.

What Sushi (And Rolls) Can Be Made Using Crab Sticks?

Using crab sticks while you are planning to make sushi at home is a good idea because they can be combined with many ingredients. This gives a huge scope for your imagination.

For example:
Use rice, rice vinegar, nori leaf, cucumber, and cream cheese. All this, combined with crab sticks, will give a great taste.

Do not forget that you can additionally use teriyaki sauce, wasabi, or something else);

You can use the same ingredients as above and bake them. For an extra texture, you can add some sesame seeds.

For an even better taste, prepare a spicy sauce for your baked sushi rolls. All you will need for the sauce is to mix the soy sauce with garlic, and mayonnaise.

Cooking such rolls at home is not as difficult as you may think, but the result will surprise you.

Rice, cucumber, chicken eggs, capelin caviar, sake, nori – all this will go well with crab sticks.

Get sushi in a bright wrapper of crab sticks, scrambled eggs, and cucumber. Yes, you will have to spend more time than usual (here you have to cook an omelet and cut it into slices), but the result is definitely worth it.

Experiment and maybe you will find your own unique combination of products.

Do not forget about simple recipes: just rice with crab sticks as the main ingredients is already a great combination for great sushi.

Is It Good for Your Health to Use Crab Sticks When Making Sushi?

There are two sides to this. Crab sticks should be considered as a product separately from the dish.

From a positive point of view, crab sticks are a dietary product. The thing is that there are practically no carbohydrates here (namely, fast carbohydrates that can affect weight gain), that is, if you don’t want to gain some additional weight, crab sticks will be a great fit for you.

From a negative point of view, crab sticks are a product that contains a minimum of natural ingredients. Soy protein is the main component of such sticks. It can be harmful (after all, it can provoke chronic diseases).

If you have long-standing liver or kidney disease, you should stop using this product frequently (you can use small amounts, but not often, follow the consumption rate).

If you can afford to use natural crab meat in your sushi, I will recommend going with natural meat.

Natural crab meat is a source of a huge amount of nutrients, vitamins, acids, and healthy protein.

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that crab sticks can only be harmful if they are consumed in excess (which is quite difficult to do if you add them to sushi, where there will be other ingredients besides them).

Nevertheless, you should be a little careful when choosing crab sticks for making sushi. I will recommend picking some options that are at least in the mid-range price options.

An Alternative to Crab Sticks to Use in Sushi

If after reading this article you start thinking that maybe it should be better to replace crab sticks with something more healthy, then a great replacement for crab sticks in sushi may be using shrimp instead.

If crab sticks are easy enough to cut and put inside the sushi (or sushi roll), then the shrimp will take you some more time and skill on your part.

For the safest results, when you plan to add shrimp to sushi, it is recommended to boil or even better fry the shrimp. After cooking the shrimp, wait until they cool down, and after that, they should be cleaned and you can use them for making sushi.

Conclusion

Using crab sticks in sushi can give you a delicious dish and will be a time-saver for you as they come precooked and they will simplify your cooking process.

As a bonus, you will also reduce the cost of the sushi, as you may get great results only with a little bit of rice, a slice of crab stick, and maybe a few thin slices of cucumbers for the freshness.

To prepare sushi (or rolls) with crab sticks, you will only need to cut them into small slices and that’s it, as the crab sticks come already cooked and you don’t need to spend your time cooking the meat.

Crab sticks do not require additional cooking or anything like that.

As we found, the crab sticks go well with a huge number of products that are used while making sushi. Rice, cucumbers, cream cheese, avocado, and many other foods combine very well with crab sticks (as well as with crab meat, if you can afford it).

In addition, they are quite beneficial for your health (if you do not consume them too much). This product is dietary and is included in the list of many popular (and effective) diets.

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