Onigiri – rice balls

Our friend Yuko came to stay with her teenage son and three of his friends for a week. Feeding them was sometimes a mission, especially when we had to make school lunches. An easy and yummy lunch is rice balls.

Cook some sticky rice (we just use medium grain white rice) and put some fillings in the middle of balls that you shape with your hands.

Yuko showed us a tip of putting the rice into a small bowl first so that you gather the same amount of rice each time to make evenly sized balls.

Shape into a ball with some filling in the middle. We add fillings like katsuobushi (dried bonito fish flakes) mixed with soy sauce, tinned salmon or umeboshi (Japanese pickled plums).

When shaping the balls, have a bowl of water on hand to keep your hands from being covered in sticky rice. A bit of salt on your hands enhances the flavour of the balls too.

Then wrap the ball in nori seaweed.

Another variation is to actually mix the filling (e.g the soy sauce flavoured fish flakes) through the rice with a bit of salt and then roll into balls. We made little ones for the little kids and they loved them.