Since sushi has become so wildly popular in the United States, many people have become quite familiar with what is perhaps the dishes most famous form in this country: the California roll, typically comprised of rice, nori or cucumber, imitation crab meat, and avocado or mango. Though the exact composition of sushi has many puzzling aspects to western audiences, "imitation crab" is perhaps chief among them. Imitation crab meat, more colloquially known as "crab sticks" or "krab", is simply pulverized and ground white fish meat - called "surimi" - that has been cured and shaped to intentionally resemble the legs of the snow crab or king crab.
The use of imitation crab over genuine crab meat is simply due to the expense of the real thing in sushi. Crab fishing is an extremely difficult and dangerous enterprise. In fact, fisherman is statistically the most dangerous occupation in the world, by a wide margin resulting in some 112 deaths in every hundred thousand - more than police officers, firefighters and military personnel combined. Because acquiring genuine crab is such a dangerous and expensive endeavor, using it in wildly popular and fiscally modest dishes like sushi is simply unfeasible, necessitating the common use of imitation crab.
Imitation crab meat is most commonly manufactured from Alaskan pollock. It is finely ground and mixed with egg whites or another binding agent so it can be shaped into the eponymous sticks. Afterwards, crab flavoring - either artificial or genuinely extracted from actual crab - and red food coloring is added to give the final product a more authentic look and taste. However, given that the base ingredient is fish, and no actual crab is essential to their production, imitation crab meat can be made to be 100% kosher. The curing process involved also sufficiently cooks the fish, so imitation crab can be safely eaten right out of the package.
California rolls were initially introduced sometime during the 1960's, in California as their name might suggest. After the end of the Second World War, many Japanese came to the United States in search of a more prosperous life like most immigrants before them, and also to escape the strenuous environment of their home country as it struggled to rebuild after being almost entirely devastated by four years of constant bombing (including two atomic blasts) during the war.
Whereas most European immigrants several decades earlier typically entered the country though New York, Japanese immigrants landed in Los Angeles, and they brought with them Sushi, sowing the seeds of its popularity in the US. Being freshly arrived immigrants in the United States, many of them unable to even speak English, it goes without saying that they were not terribly well-to-do in terms of money. As they further developed their cuisine in their new country, again, financial limitations necessitated the use of imitation crab in what rapidly became their signature dish.
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Article by Paul Wise. When it comes to imitation crab, Paul recommends Sushimaven.com for tips and recipes on sushi.
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