If you love crab legs and if you love sushi, get ready to have your life changed by this King Crab Sushi Roll with miso butter. The beautiful union of two of the world's best foods!
King crab is such a luscious, luxurious seafood. It's always been hard for me to think of doing anything with it other than dipping it in garlic lemon butter and eating it as quickly as possible.
But the last time I made king crab legs, I noticed how much meat came from the shoulder area of the crab at the top of the cluster. It's delicious, but it all comes out shredded instead of those big, beautiful crab legs we all love.
So I started noodling on how I could dress up this part of the king crab leg. And I landed on this temaki sushi roll with miso butter.
Miso butter. Where have you been my whole life? It's a 4-ingredient wonder sauce that begs to be drizzled and basted and spooned over everything in your life.
But first, the sushi...
What you'll need to make this recipe:
Before we get to the step by step instructions, a few notes about the ingredients:
Seafood: the recipe calls for 1 cup cooked king or snow crab legs. substitute your favorite seafood item, including cooked shrimp, imitation crab, or sushi-grade fish.
Shiro miso: the miso butter sauce uses white miso. If using a darker paste, reduce the amount of miso and taste the sauce before adding more.
Nori sheets: the recipe calls for nori sheets for wrapping the sushi rolls. Skip the sheets if you just want to make a sushi bowl, or cut them in strips over the bowl.
Vegetables: I chose cucumber, avocado, carrot, scallions and micro greens for my roll. Use whatever sushi veggies you love most.
Full ingredient list and measurements included in the printable recipe card below.
Step-by-step instructions:
1. Prep all ingredients
To begin, prep and assemble all of your vegetables, Perfect Sushi Rice and nori sheet for the rolls as seen in above picture.
2. Make miso butter
Next, make the miso butter. Add 2 teaspoons of white miso to a small saucepan with 4 tablespoons of butter, lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of sriracha. Stir to combine well and heat over medium until the butter melts, the miso fully dissolves and the butter sauce is very warm.
3. Incorporate crab meat into butter
Drop the fresh crab meat (whole legs and shredded) into the miso butter and stir to coat. Let the crab warm a bit and soak up the sauce, then prepare your temaki rolls.
4. Roll temaki
Cut each sheet of nori in half, so you have 10-12 pieces of nori. Lay one nori sheet, shiny side down (rough side facing up), on a cutting board. Wet your fingers with cold water, then spread seasoned sushi rice across about ⅓ of the seaweed, pressing the rice to the edges.
Layer your toppings diagonally across the sushi rice, so the ends are overlapping one corner with rice. Cucumber strips, carrot sticks, scallions and microgreens, followed by the creamy sliced avocado. The miso butter crab should be the final layer of the stack.
Once all your fillings are positioned, fold the bottom corner of the nori sheet up and over the fillings, then wrap the empty side of the seaweed wrap around the roll, forming a cone. (The outside of the roll should be the shiny side) Drizzle with additional miso butter and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
5. Serve and enjoy
Serve the temaki rolls rolls within 5 minutes of wrapping, as the nori sheets will wilt and get soggy.
Looking for more sushi recipes?
- Spicy Tuna Crispy Rice Sushi
- Spicy Salmon Recipe (for Poke Bowls or Sushi)
- Sushi Crab Mix
- Spicy Salmon Sushi Roll in a Bowl
FAQ's and Serving Suggestions:
A delicious snow crab sushi roll drenched in this miso butter would be sublime. Imitation crab sticks will offer a different texture and flavor than real crab meat, but with the avocado slices and cucumber, they will have a very California sushi roll vibe.
For a fun happy hour menu, I would serve these California roll temakis with a Korean vegetable pancake and some seaweed salad. Din Tai Fung's Cucumber Salad would be another great side, as well as Spicy Crab Salad!
The small amount of sriracha in the miso butter doesn't add much heat. If spicy food is your jam and you're looking to light up your taste buds, add additional sriracha or sambal to the butter sauce. You can also serve the rolls with spicy mayonnaise, which is a combination of Japanese kewpie mayonnaise and sriracha sauce.
If you have a bamboo mat, this easy sushi recipe could easily be turned into an uramaki sushi roll, using your rolling mat to fashion a sushi roll with the crab and veggies in the the center (follow these easy step by step instructions). Or you can skip the rolling, and make a king crab sushi bowl, with Perfect Sushi Rice, then topped with all your fresh veggies, condiments and miso butter crab.
Your local grocery store likely only sells cooked crab legs, even if they're frozen. So cooking crab legs you buy from your local grocer involves heating (or re-heating) gently so you don't dry out that succulent crab meat before eating it! The savory miso butter is the perfect vehicle to achieve our goal.
This recipe calls for real king crab (or snow crab). The traditional Sushi Crab Mix used in most sushi rolls is made of imitation crab.
Temaki rolls need to be made and eaten within just a few minutes, or they become soggy. For this reason, I don't recommend storing the temaki rolls in the refrigerator once they are made. Just make enough to eat and store the ingredients separately in the refrigerator.
King Crab Sushi Roll with Miso Butter
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
Ingredients
For the crab in miso butter:
1 cup cooked king or snow crab legs
4 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons shiro miso
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
For the temaki sushi roll:
1 ½ cups seasoned sushi rice
5-6 nori seaweed sheets, cut in half
2 spring onions, julienned
1 carrot, julienned
1 avocado, peeled and sliced
½ English cucumber, julienned
½ cup microgreens
Sesame seeds
Instructions
- To begin, prep and assemble all of your vegetables, sushi rice and nori sheet for the rolls.
- Next, make the miso butter. Add 2 teaspoons of white miso to a small saucepan with 4 tablespoons of butter and 1 teaspoon of sriracha. Stir to combine well and heat over medium low heat until the butter melts, the miso fully dissolves and the butter sauce is very warm.
- Drop the fresh crab meat (whole legs and shredded) into the miso butter and stir to coat. Let the crab warm and soak up the sauce, then prepare your temaki rolls.
- Cut each sheet of nori in half, so you have 10-12 pieces of nori. Wet your fingers, then spread a small handful of rice across about ⅓ of the seaweed, pressing the rice to the edges. Layer your toppings diagonally across the sushi rice, so the ends are overlapping one corner with rice. The miso butter crab should be the final layer of the stack.
- Once all your fillings are positioned diagonally in the center of the rice, fold the bottom corner of the nori sheet up and over the fillings, then wrap the empty side of the seaweed wrap around the roll, forming a cone. Drizzle with miso butter and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve immediately.
Notes
Serve the temaki rolls rolls within 5 minutes of wrapping, as the nori sheets will wilt and get soggy quickly.
- Prep Time: 20
- Cook Time: 10
- Category: Dinner, Lunch, Happy Hour, Appetizer
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Japanese, American
Joanna
the miso butter is spectacular! I didn't even try to make the roll, just piled the crab in miso butter into a sushi bowl. so good. thanks!
Christina Jolam
Crab sushi in a bowl sounds perfect, Joanna! Thanks so much for coming back to leave a positive review.