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Elevate your weeknight dinners with this quick and easy vegan sushi bake recipe. It’s a mashup of sushi, spam musubi, and casserole. It might remind you of your favorite Japanese and Korean restaurants but from the comfort of your home (and for a fraction of the cost). A veggie sushi bake is so delightful that you won’t miss the animal products.

This recipe makes 4 servings of vegan baked sushi.

Table of Contents

(click the links below to skip to the section you’re looking for)

• Sushi Bake Ingredients
• Vegan Sushi Bake Recipe
• Optional Decorations
• Tips and FAQ
• Ingredient Substitutions
• Video
• Nutritional Information
• Contact Me with Questions

Unlike many of the sushi bake recipes online, I bake mine at a hotter heat. This high temperature will help the rice get crispy on top and on the sides that are touching the pan. It reminds me of some bibimbap I had in a stone bowl at a vegan Korean restaurant called Franchia in New York City.

Baked Sushi Ingredients

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• 8 slices (~330g) of vegan spam
• 7 ½ cups of cooked sushi rice
• ¼ cup (60g) sushi vinegar
• 1 sheet of nori
• 1 ½ cups (168g) of grated carrots
• 1 ½ cups (128g) of shredded purple cabbage
• 1 tablespoon (10g) of sesame seeds (optional)

How to Make this Rice Bake

prep time: 9 min | bake time: 10 min

Preheat the oven to 425º F (220ºC) if you’re not planning to decorate the sushi bake. If you want to decorate the top, wait until you start the decorating process before preheating.

Cook the vegan spam if you haven’t already. I like it best cooked in the air fryer, but usually the instructions suggest cooking it in a frying pan.

Oil an oven safe baking dish with a vegan oil like olive oil, avocado oil, or sesame oil. I used an 8-inch (20cm) square glass pan, an oil sprayer, and a paper towel.

Season 7 ½ cups of cooked sushi rice with 3-4 tablespoons of sushi vinegar.

Layer the bottom of the pan with around 2 cups of the cooked, seasoned sushi rice. Wear disposable gloves or wet your hands with water before handling the rice. This will help it not stick to you.

Layer a sheet of nori on top of the rice.

Layer 8 slices of cooked vegan spam on top of the rice.

Layer shredded carrots on top of the spam.

Layer shredded purple cabbage on top of the carrots.

Sprinkle a little bit of sesame seeds over the cabbage. This is optional, but you can use up to 1 tablespoon (10g).

Top with around 2 cups of the remaining rice and then skip to the section on how to decorate the top. If you’re not planning to decorate it, use all of the rest of the rice on top.

Bake at 425º F (220ºC) for 10-15 minutes. Make sure your oven is preheated before putting it in.

Garnish with avocado, cucumber, sprouts, chives, or any other toppings you like after it comes out of the oven.

Cut into 4 servings if this is all you’re having or 8 servings if you’re serving it with something else.

Serve with teriyaki sauce, tamari, sriracha mayo, or soy sauce (if you don’t avoid soy).

How to Decorate a Hello Kitty Sushi Bake

prep time: 18 min

Preheat the oven to 425º F (220ºC) if you haven’t already.

I wanted to decorate my sushi bake to look like a scene from a Hello Kitty coloring book. I used the following ingredients for my decoration.

• snow peas
• purple daikon radish
• watermelon radish
• vegan food coloring
• additional sushi vinegar

Make a Hello Kitty using a Hello Kitty rice mold and some of the 1 ½ cups of remaining rice. If you don’t have a Hello Kitty rice mold, you can try to mold it by hand by wearing disposable gloves or by wetting your hands before touching the rice.

Cut 1-2 very thin slices of watermelon radish.

Cut out a bow and some clothes for Hello Kitty using the templates that came with your rice mold. If you don’t have any templates, you can just freehand it. The most important part is her bow. You can skip the clothes. Making the Hello Kitty takes 2-3 minutes.

Slice the rest of the watermelon radish and the purple daikon radish.

Cut around 15 tiny stars out of the radish slices.

Color the rest of the white rice with as many colors as you want. I used Exberry all-natural food colors to make blue, purple, pink, and green rice. Check my list of vegan food coloring for other options. It took me 5-6 minutes to make 4 colors of rice using powdered coloring. If you use powdered coloring, mix the powder with seasoned rice vinegar before you add it to the rice.

You can see other examples of how I have colored sushi rice in my temaki recipe and my sushi cake recipe.

Make a rainbow of rice with three colors. I used pink, purple, and yellow. The rainbow took me about 3 minutes.

Spread the blue rice above the rainbow. This will be the sky. I spent about 1 minute making the sky.

Make the grass on the lower third of the scene either with green colored rice or with green veggies. I used snow peas for mine. The grass took me about 1 minute.

Set Hello Kitty onto the scene, in front of the rainbow.

Place radish stars all over the sky and ground. I spent about 4 minutes slicing radish, cutting out stars, and placing them in the sky.

Bake the sushi casserole at 425º F (220ºC) for 10-15 minutes. Make sure your oven is preheated before putting it in.

Cut into 4 servings if this is all you’re having or 8 servings if you’re serving it with something else.

Serve with teriyaki sauce, tamari, or sriracha mayo.

Questions and Answers

How much dry sushi rice do I need to make 7 ½ cups of cooked sushi rice?

The ratio of uncooked dry sushi rice to cooked sushi rice is 1:3. So, to make 7 ½ cups of cooked sushi rice, you’ll want 2 ½ cups (~500g) of uncooked sushi rice. If you’re using an instant pot, follow my instant pot sushi rice recipe.

Can this sushi bake casserole be used for meal prep?

Sushi bake is a great meal to batch cook with. If you double the recipe and bake it in a large casserole dish like a 9x13 glass baking pan, you’ll have lunches or dinners for the whole week. Sushi bake can be reheated in a microwave, air fryer, or oven.

When you grate the carrots and shred the cabbage, you can grate and shred extra and save them in jars to use in salads or stir fry later in the week.

Is this sushi bake gluten free?

This sushi bake is gluten free as long as you make your own vegan spam out of tofu instead of using store-bought spam. Serve it with gluten-free tamari instead of shoyu.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Vegan Spam: The vegan spam I usually see at grocery stores is either Omni pork spam or Unmeat spam. I have used both of these, and they both taste great. I also sometimes make this with my homemade gluten-free vegan spam. Once I even used vegan fish filets. This is a good option if you like your sushi to have a slight fishy flavor.
• Sushi Rice: If you don’t plan to decorate the top like I did, then you can use brown sushi rice to make a vegan brown rice casserole. But if you plan to decorate it, I recommend white sushi rice. I’ve also made this with jade bamboo rice which is another short grain sticky rice.
• Sushi Vinegar: Sushi vinegar is just seasoned rice vinegar. If you’re a strict vegan or making this for a strict vegan, buy organic or vegan sushi vinegar to make sure it uses sugar that’s processed using vegan methods. I buy the organic 365 brand from Whole Foods because it’s the cheapest. If you can’t find seasoned rice vinegar, it’s easy to make your own. Combine ¼ cup rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon of vegan, raw, or organic sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt either in a saucepan on the stove or in the microwave. Heat and stir to dissolve the salt and sugar. This can take 15 seconds in the microwave or 5 minutes on the stove. If you don’t want to buy rice vinegar because you don’t think you’ll use it again, try making it with apple cider vinegar.
• Nori: Nori sheets are the perfect size for an 8-inch square sushi bake. However, you can replace the sheet of nori with several seaweed snacks. Or soak a tablespoon of hijiki seaweed in a cup of water for a half hour. Then add it to your cooked rice when you add the sushi vinegar. You can also omit the seaweed altogether.
• Carrots: Replace the grated carrots with julienned bell peppers or grated summer or winter squash. Almost all fresh veggies will taste delicious in this vegan sushi bake recipe.
• Shredded Purple Cabbage: Replace with shredded green cabbage or Napa cabbage. Or even grated beetroot.
• Sesame Seeds: Unhulled brown sesame seeds add a nutty crunch to your vegan sushi bake. You can replace them with gomasio or hulled sesame seeds or just omit them entirely.

Video

Nutrition Facts

This nutritional information is for one serving of this vegan rice casserole. I’m assuming that this entire sushi bake has only 4 large servings. This doesn’t count any additional ingredients used for decorating.

• Servings: 4
• Calories: 711
• Total fat: 16g
• Saturated fat: 7g
• Cholesterol: 0mg
• Sodium: 895mg
• Total Carbohydrates: 119g
• Sugars: 9g
• Fiber: 11g
• Protein: 17g
• Calcium: 71mg
• Potassium: 434mg
• Iron: 3mg
• Vitamin A: 377mcg
• Vitamin C: 20mg
• Vitamin K: 14mcg

Comments or Questions?

If you make this recipe, I would love it if you’d snap a pic, post to instagram, and tag me @vegandollhouse. It seriously makes my day/week/month!

Please message me (instagram or email) if you have any questions or feedback about the recipe.

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