Lion King Roll (Sushi)

Lion King Rolls

Sushi is delicious, but it can get expensive eating out all the time, especially for the fresh and mouth-watering kind of sushi that makes my tummy very happy. I occasionally eat at the Sushi House in Alameda and often get the Lion King roll (baked salmon roll). Every bite is savored as each morsel of the Lion King roll is just pure heavenly goodness.

The Lion King roll is essentially the California roll (sushi rice with imitation crab, avocado, and cucumber) wrapped with salmon and baked, and topped off with a special house sauce. I was surprised that the house sauce had only three ingredients, and aside from trying to thinly slice the salmon, making the Lion King at home was quite simple and budget-friendly.

Ingredients for Lion King Roll

Recipe for Lion King Roll Secret House Sauce:

Whisk together:

• 1/2 cup mayo – I used regular American mayonnaise such as Hellmann’s. I think if you use the Kewpie Japanese brand mayo, it might be tastier and more authentic.

• 1-2 tablespoon of Sambal Oelek brand chili sauce. Sriracha brand is just as good.

• 1 tablespoon of roe (Masago)

Lion King Roll secret house sauce

Recipe for the Sushi Rice:

• 3 cups sushi rice (Kokuho Rose brand)

• 3 1/4 cups water

Rice Mixture. Heat together on stovetop until sugar dissolves:

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar (Marukan brand)

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1 teaspoon salt

Cook the rice and toss the mixture in once the rice is done. Fold the mixture into the rice slowly so that you don’t break the grains. It took us a few times to get the sushi rice right. We screwed up because we did not label our seasoning and mistakened our salt for our sugar. We thought it was odd that the sugar never melted with the vinegar. But our knuckle brains decided to proceed anyways and poured the salty mixture into our freshly cooked sushi rice! Our rumbling tummies weren’t happy that we had to wait another hour to cook up another pot.

Prepare your cucumber, imitation crab, and avocado by cutting them into strips.

Spread a thin layer of sushi rice onto the seaweed, add cumber, imitation crab and avocado. Roll everything up with a bamboo mat.

Inside the Lion King Roll: Rice, cucumber, imitation crab and avocado

Roll up the sushi with a bamboo mat

Prepare your salmon by cutting them thin and lay them on top of the roll. Spread a generous amount of the house sauce on top of the roll and bake until it is lightly brown (400 F for 10 minutes). Top it off with a bit more masago and some decorative baby greens.

Slice that sucker up, grab the soy sauce, wasabi, and pickled ginger and enjoy! Great homemade Lion King roll that costs a fraction of what you would pay at a restaurant.

The only expensive thing for my meal was obviously the salmon but I bought a generous fresh slab at Costco and made quite a feast out of it. To eat the amount that we did, I’m sure we would have rung up a $70+ bill at Sushi House. And there is still a generous slab of salmon left over for another tasty treat next weekend! W00t w00t!