My mom used to pack rice balls for me as an elementary school kid for lunch way before the sushi craze swept the nation and way before there were sightings of Alice Waters toting around onigiri. Having these balls of rice wrapped in "black stuff" was actually a source of shame and anxiety for me everyday in elementary school. When the 12 o'clock bell rang for lunch, most were ecstatic about busting into their PB&J sandwiches and partaking in Fruit-by-the-Foot trading sessions. I would dread the fact that when I unzipped my cloth lunch bag, I would get a waft of salt, rice and sea. Because I was already painfully shy to begin with, my lunch consisting of black balls and dried fish pushed me further into being a recluse.
"Ew! Why are you eating black stuff!" my classmates would shout. Confession: I threw away my onigiri sometimes just to avoid the humiliation. I am very sorry Mom.
Years following my elementary school experience, I didn't have a pleasant impression of onigiri - I had reached my quota early on.
It wasn't until I was in college when I visited Japan and its ubiquitous comibini, that I experienced a wonderful reunion with onigiri. Packaged to perfection, and prices at around ¥120, they were efficient and affordable.
Fast forward to the present.
Fall semester started yesterday for my husband, who is currently taking ESL classes. To save money I suggested I would pack a lunch for him. This was a bit monumental for me. I have never packed a lunch for someone other than myself and today I broke that barrier.
I decided to proudly make onigiri.
Ingredients (for about 8 onigiri)
2 cups fresh steamed rice
1 can tuna
3 tbsp Japanese mayonnaise
salt
Seaweed
1.
Make rice
2. Make filling. My filling was canned tuna and kewpie mayonnaise. For one can of tuna, I add about 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise.
3. Prepare a little bowl full of water and sprinkle in about a teaspoon of salt into it. This bowl of water will be used to wet your hands so rice doesn't stick all over them.
4. Once the rice is done steaming, stir it around so that it cools down so that you can handle it without burning the palms of your hands.
5. Rub plenty of salt on your hands. Grab a handful of rice.
6. Mold into a ball.
7. Press into the middle so that you create a little space that will allow you to insert the filling.
8. Put the filling into the hole.
9. Close up the hole the best you can. You might need to pile a little bit of extra rice over the hole to cover it completely.
10. Onigiri are usually molded into a triangle shape. Mold the onigiri into a triangle shape by place the ball in the palm of one hand, while using the other hand forming a "V" with your thumb and other fingers in an L shape.
11. Wrap the onigiri in saran wrap.
12. When eating, wrap the onigiri in some seaweed. You can wrap it up entirely or do what's shown in the picture at the bottom of the page.
My mom used to pack rice balls for me as an elementary school kid for lunch way before the sushi craze swept the nation and way before there were sightings of Alice Waters toting around onigiri. Having these balls of rice wrapped in "black stuff" was actually a source of shame and anxiety for me everyday in elementary school. When the 12 o'clock bell rang for lunch, most were ecstatic about busting into their PB&J sandwiches and partaking in Fruit-by-the-Foot trading sessions. I would dread the fact that when I unzipped my cloth lunch bag, I would get a waft of salt, rice and sea. Because I was already painfully shy to begin with, my lunch consisting of black balls and dried fish pushed me further into being a recluse.
"Ew! Why are you eating black stuff!" my classmates would shout. Confession: I threw away my onigiri sometimes just to avoid the humiliation. I am very sorry Mom.
Years following my elementary school experience, I didn't have a pleasant impression of onigiri - I had reached my quota early on.
It wasn't until I was in college when I visited Japan and its ubiquitous comibini, that I experienced a wonderful reunion with onigiri. Packaged to perfection, and prices at around ¥120, they were efficient and affordable.
Fast forward to the present.
Fall semester started yesterday for my husband, who is currently taking ESL classes. To save money I suggested I would pack a lunch for him. This was a bit monumental for me. I have never packed a lunch for someone other than myself and today I broke that barrier.
I decided to proudly make onigiri.
Ingredients (for about 8 onigiri)
2 cups fresh steamed rice
1 can tuna
3 tbsp Japanese mayonnaise
salt
Seaweed
1. Make rice
2. Make filling. My filling was canned tuna and kewpie mayonnaise. For one can of tuna, I add about 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise.
3. Prepare a little bowl full of water and sprinkle in about a teaspoon of salt into it. This bowl of water will be used to wet your hands so rice doesn't stick all over them.
4. Once the rice is done steaming, stir it around so that it cools down so that you can handle it without burning the palms of your hands.
5. Rub plenty of salt on your hands. Grab a handful of rice.
6. Mold into a ball.
7. Press into the middle so that you create a little space that will allow you to insert the filling.
8. Put the filling into the hole.
9. Close up the hole the best you can. You might need to pile a little bit of extra rice over the hole to cover it completely.
10. Onigiri are usually molded into a triangle shape. Mold the onigiri into a triangle shape by place the ball in the palm of one hand, while using the other hand forming a "V" with your thumb and other fingers in an L shape.
11. Wrap the onigiri in saran wrap.
12. When eating, wrap the onigiri in some seaweed. You can wrap it up entirely or do what's shown in the picture at the bottom of the page.
Comments (35)
My little friend Laurel Swift used to come to school with Japanese bentos. Black food was totally the non-rage in 5th grade.
On a related note, my mom made me kimbab the first day of school and everyone made fun of me. After that, I told my mom I wanted bagels like the Jewish girls.
My seaweed is yakinori. Wow, I didn’t know about the ajitsuke-nori thing. My family is all from Kanto so I guess I would have never really come across an onigiri wrapped in ajitsuke nori. I love ajitsuke nori though. It’s definitely like crack – as a kid I would just eat a whole canister of it.
This post is made so much more awesome by the comments. There are some real sociology lessons in all your shared experiences as issei. I also remember feeling similar immigrant food-based insecurities at school but for Persian food.
I think the 80s had a lot to with it, especially since there was so much anti-Iranian and Japanese sentiment all around.
Although I wasn’t fed rice balls as a youth, I did recently throw some away. To be honest I don’t understand rice balls. There’s all this rice that you bight into expecting to get some awesome filling, but even if you take a huge bite I usually don’t get to the filling until the second bite or so.
Too much rice, too much balls.
Byran – Haha, totally the “non-rage.”
bionicgrrrl – Cracking up. Did you ever get bagels in your lunch after that?
Paystyle – I agree about the ratio of the rice to the filling. It’s inevitable that the first bite is just rice. It’s kind of disappointing. But I have a method after the first bite, the second bite doesn’t encompass the whole middle part – or else all the filling would be eaten in that bite. I nibble at the filling while taking bites of the outer (rice) edges of the onigiri. Another remedy is to pack some tsukemono (pickles) on the side so you can nibble on those while you take bites of the onigiri. I’d like to incorporate that more too.
Oh, and yet another option is gomoku (five condiments: carrots, gobo, hijiki, and two others) onigiri. So you can mix the white rice with a gomoku mixture before you shape them into balls. Like this photo here:
http://blogpress.w18.net/photos/09/10/24/845.jpg
I had a taco boat hot lunch every wednesday… we should have traded.
That’s interesting Paystyle. In Japan (especially small town where I grew up), when someone opens a lunch box and find sandwich, instead of rice balls, that made him a modern and popular kid. Everyone looked at them with envy. It’s totally Takashi Murakami’s Little Boy world. Japan’s inferiority to America is being showcased even in the contents of lunch box.
I make my onigiri with whatever I can find in the fridge and pantry. furikake, pickled plum, pickled other vegetables, bonito flake, mix everything together and shape. In this way, every bite has flavor, not just rice.
If the rice ball was an object of cultural nationalism of one’s home country in contrast with the American PB&J sanwich, then the rice ball becomes a symbol of anti-imperial hegemony, no?
Ok I can get down with a rice ball in that case, but somebody please put more filling for the love of nori!
My mum used to (and still does) make onigiri with dried shiso powder (yukari). She’d mix the rice with the shiso first and then put an umeboshi in the middle. That’s still my favourite. Plus she also did that with salted cooked salmon. Yum. Whenever we went on a trip by car, she’d make a whole tupperware full of it and we’d eat it on the way. Brings back memories.
We made some to take with us on a trip to France for a friend’s wedding. My two Japanese friends and I thought it was the best thing to eat on the train. We’re so Japanese.