Wasabi Mayo Crab Onigirazu

5 from 1 vote

Wasabi Mayo Crab Onigirazu is a fun sandwich made with Japanese sushi rice, crab meat and fresh vegetables topped with a zesty wasabi mayo and folded over with a nori (seaweed) wrapper to be enjoyed as a picnic lunch or in a bento box.

Prep Time30

Cook Time15

Total Time45

Course: Mains

Cuisine: Japanese

Servings:

Calories: 441kcal

Author: HWC Magazine

Ingredients

½ cup mayonnaise
We used Kewpie.
1 teaspoon wasabi
4 sheets plastic wrap
a little larger than the size of the nori dried seaweed sheet
4 sheets nori (dried seaweed/laver)
4 cups rice
cooked and cooled short grained Japanese sushi rice
6 oz crab meat
either imitation crab, real crab picked over for shell or canned crab.
16 slices diakon pickles thin sliced or any other pickles of choice
36 slices cucumbers
with peel (or other vegetables of choice like super thin slices of carrot, celery, purple cabbage, etc)
4 toothpicks (use as a marker to know which way to cut the onigirazu)

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Mix together mayonnaise and wasabi. Set aside.
Place a sheet of plastic wrap a little bit larger than nori leaf (dried seaweed sheet) on your working surface. Lay your nori leaf (dried seaweed sheet) on an angle with a corner pointing up (in a diamond shape) with the non-shiny side facing up and the shiny side facing down.
Place about ½ cup cooked rice into a thin layer shaped into a square in the middle of the nori leaf (dried seaweed). (Wet your fingers with a little rice vinegar to prevent the rice from sticking to your fingers, if you wish)
Place 3 slices of imitation crab meat (or real steamed crab meat) in an even layer across the top of the cooked rice, which is lying on top of the dried seaweed sheet. Press down slightly with your fingers. Drizzle ⅛ cup of wasabi mayo on top of crabmeat.
Place a thin layer of sliced cucumbers and then thin layer of sliced Japanese daikon pickles (or maybe a fried egg instead for that bright yellow color) on top of the crab layer.
Layer on top about ½ cup of cooked Japanese short grain rice and shape flat and into a square. Press down slightly.
Take note of which way your ingredients are laid out before you fold up your onigirazu. (The goal is to cut your wasabi mayo crab onigirazu so that you see a pretty cross cut of your sandwich displaying all of the colorful fillings) Gently fold up to opposite ends of nori leaf up and around the sides of the onigirazu so the points or the ends of the nori leaf cross at the top. Then take the other edge of the nori leaf and gently pull up the other two sides and cross until the edges meet up at the top. Place the toothpick in the direction (just gently lay on top as a reference tool) that you will be cutting the onigirazu to show case the ingredient layers. Finally, wrap the wasabi mayo crab onigirazu firmly and tightly with the plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator until ready to serve or at least 30 minutes.
Remove the plastic wrap. Wet your sharp knife with water or rice vinegar (to make it easier to cut) and cut your wasabi mayo crab onigirazu in the same direction of your toothpick marker. Place your delicious wasabi mayo crab onigirazu into your bento box with other treats and enjoy on your next picnic or work/school lunches. Enjoy!

Notes

You can use any additions you want in your onigirazu such as other colorful vegetables, left over chicken instead of crab, or even a fried egg instead of Japanese pickles.

Prepare and layer each of the onigirazu sandwiches in an assembly line fashion to speed up the process.

Practice makes perfect when assembling your wasabi mayo crab onigarizu so be patient with yourself. It is not really too hard if you remember these 4 basic steps.

1) Place your nori sheet on your table on an angle so it looks like a diamond.
2) Use ½ cup cooked rice for the bottom, press down, fill with crab, wasabi mayo and vegetables evenly, among the four onigarizu.
3) Place a final ½ cup of top of all of your fillings
4) Pull up the sides of the nori and fold like an envelope and tightly wrap saran wrap to hold onigirazu together.

Nutrition