Got Rice and Tuna_ Make Onigiri For An Easy Japanese Lunch (Under $1).

You've most likely seen these before, a little triangle of rice wrapped in a sheet of dark, crispy seaweed. In Japan, we call them onigiri, and honestly, I think they're one of the best lunches anyone ever came up with. You can drop one in your bag or your coat pocket, it keeps you full until dinner, and you don't need a plate, a fork, or a microwave to eat it. When you make them at home, they also come out to well under a dollar each, even with a good filling So if there's a bag of rice in your cupboard and a can of tuna in the back of your pantry, you already have most of what you need. People in Japan have been packing rice this way for hundreds of years, for long trips on foot, for work in the fields, even for battle. Rice pressed into a firm shape holds together in a bag, and a bowl of loose rice doesn't. We're going to make three kinds together. The first is the classic one, with spicy tuna tucked into the middle so you find it a couple of bites in. The second is called mazakomi which means the fillings are mixed right through the rice and for that one we'll use crispy spam and egg. The last one is yaki onigiri which goes into a frying pan and gets brushed with a sweet soy glaze until the outside turns crunchy and golden. Each one gets shaped a different way, so by the time we finish you'll know whether you're a mold person, a plastic wrap person, or someone who just wants to get their hands into the rice. But if you've ever tried making these at home and had them crumble in your hand, I can almost promise it wasn't your shaping. It was the bag of rice you started with. So that's where we'll begin. If your onigiri fell apart, my first guess is that you used long grain rice, like jasmine or basmati. Those are wonderful rice, but they're the wrong rice for this. Here's why. Rice contains two main kinds of starch. One kind keeps the grains firm and separate after cooking. The other kind makes them soft and sticky. Long grain rice, like jasmine or the standard white rice in most American supermarkets, has more of the first kind. That's why it comes out fluffy, with every grain sitting on its own. That's perfect next to a curry, but it means the grains don't want to hold on to each other. You can press long grain rice into a triangle, and it will look fine for about four seconds. Then it relaxes and crumbles into your lap. Japanese rice is a short grain or medium grain rice, and it has more of the sticky starch. The grains are shorter and plumper. After cooking, they're glossy, slightly chewy, and they cling to each other gently. That gentle stickiness is the glue that holds the whole onigiri together. In the United States, look for bags labeled Japanese-style rice, short grain rice, or sushi rice. Cow roast is a medium grain rice grown in California and it's easy to find and works very well. You don't need the most expensive bag in the store. You just need the right type. There's one thing to be careful about. Sticky rice, sometimes called glutinous rice or sweet rice, is a different thing again. It's extremely sticky and chewy and it's used for mochi and some desserts. If you make onigiri with it, you'll get something closer to a rubber ball. So go So go for short grain or medium grain, not sweet rice. For today, I'm cooking three rice cooker cups of rice. If you have a rice cooker, you probably have one of these little plastic cups that came with it. People get confused because it's called a cup, but it isn't a U.S. cup. It holds 180 milliliters, which is about three quarters of an American cup. That size comes from an old Japanese unit of measure and rice cookers have kept it ever since. In Japan, nobody even thinks about it. You just use the cup that came with the machine and the lines inside the pot and it all matches. The trouble only starts when someone measures the rice with a US measuring cup and then fills the water to the rice cooker line. Then the ratio is off and the rice comes out wet. Three of these cups is enough for six or seven onigiri, depending on how big you make them. Before the rice goes in the cooker, we wash it. Put the rice in a bowl, cover it with cold water, and swirl it around with your hand. The water turns cloudy, almost milky. Pour that water off, add fresh water, and do it again. Usually three or four rounds is enough, until the water is mostly clear. It doesn't have to be crystal clear. Rinsing does two jobs. First, it washes away dust, bits of bran, and the occasional tiny piece of something that has no business being in your lunch. Rice comes from a field, after all. Second, it removes loose starch powder on the outside of each grain. If you skip the rinse, that loose starch turns into a kind of paste in the cooker. The rice comes out heavy and gluey on the surface and the grains lose their shape. We want rice that is sticky enough to hold together but where you can still see every grain. Rinsing is how you get both at the same time. A small tip here. Be gentle. Swirl the rice. Don't scrub it hard like you're washing a frying pan. Wet rice grains break quite easily and broken grains turn mushy. Once it's rinsed, drain it well and put it back into the rice cooker pot. Since I use three rice cooker cups, I fill the water up to the line, mark three inside the pot. That's it. The machine was designed for this. If you're using a rice cooker but measured your rice with a regular measuring cup, use about one and a quarter parts water to one part rice. If you're cooking on the stove in a pot with a tight lid, you'll need a little less water than in the rice cooker, about equal amounts of rice and water, or just a splash more, because the rice cooker and the stovetop handle steam differently. If you have the time, let the rinsed rice soak in its water for 20 or 30 minutes before you turn on the heat. That helps the center of each grain cook through evenly. It's not essential, but it helps. Then close the lid, press start, and let the machine do its work. The rice needs a good 40 minutes, so while we wait, let me tell you about something. Rice and a can of tuna turning into a real lunch is exactly the kind of cooking my new book is about. It's full of cheap, everyday Japanese food, like the sweet rolled omelette we call tamagoyaki. It also shows you how to stock a small kitchen, how to plan a whole week of meals around a handful of ingredients, and how to cook simple Japanese food in a normal American kitchen. You can find it at frugaljapan.shop. Just click the link in the description, or scan the code on your screen to get your copy. Now, that rice isn't going to wait for us forever, so let's make our first filling, spicy tuna. Open one can of tuna and drain it very well. I mean properly drain it. Press the lid down into the can and squeeze out every bit of liquid you can. This matters more than it seems. Moisture is the enemy of onigiri. If the filling is wet, that liquid soaks into the rice around it. The rice gets soft and loses its grip, and then your rice ball splits open right in the middle on the first bite, usually onto your shirt. A good onigiri filling should be moist enough to taste nice, but not wet enough to drip. Put the drained tuna in a small bowl. Add about 1 1⁄2 tablespoons of Kewpie mayonnaise. Kewpie is the Japanese mayonnaise in the soft squeeze bottle with the red cap. It's made with egg yolks instead of whole eggs and a little rice vinegar, so it's richer and slightly tangier than American mayonnaise. Most big grocery stores carry it now. If you can't find it, regular mayonnaise is fine. You might want a few drops of rice vinegar with it. Then add 1 teaspoon of sriracha and 1⁄4 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil. Please only a quarter teaspoon. Sesame oil is very strong. A little bit makes the tuna smell nutty and warm. Too much and every bite tastes like sesame oil and nothing else. This batch fills only three or four onigiri, so a quarter teaspoon is already plenty. Now take a fork and mash everything together, breaking the tuna into fine flakes so the mayonnaise coats all of it. Fine flakes are easier to tuck into the rice than big chunks. Big chunks tend to poke through the sides. Then taste it. Every can of tuna is different. Some are packed in oil, some in water, some come out dry and stringy, some soft. If yours looks dry and crumbly after mixing, add a little more mayonnaise, maybe half a teaspoon at a time. Go slowly. The texture changes fast, and a filling that's one spoonful too loose is already too wet to stay put inside the rice. You want it to hold together when you press it with the fork like a soft paste with some texture. If you want it hotter, add more sriracha. If you have kids at home, you can leave the sriracha out completely and it becomes a plain tuna mayo filling. That's actually one of the most popular onigiri in Japanese convenience stores. My younger daughter eats only the plain version. She says the spicy one is, quote, for adults and dragons. The filling is done, but the rice cooker still has a while to go, so cover the tuna and put it in the fridge to stay cool until we need it. The rice is done. When the rice cooker beeps, open the lid and fluff the rice with a rice paddle. Don't stir it around like soup. Cut down into the rice with the edge of the paddle and gently lift and turn it from the bottom. That lets steam escape and loosens the grains without crushing them. Then close the lid again and let the rice rest for 10 to 15 minutes. People ask me why not shape them straight away while the rice is fresh. The answer is that freshly cooked rice is very hot, too hot to hold, but that's not the only problem. When rice is that hot, it's also very soft and full of steam. If you press it right away, the grains squash into each other and you get a dense, pasty lump instead of a rice ball. A short rest lets the surface of the grains firm up a little while the rice stays warm, but don't let it go cold either. That's the other side of the mistake. Warm rice is sticky. Cold rice, especially rice from the refrigerator, turns firm and dry and it won't hold its shape well anymore. Leftover rice from yesterday is great for fried rice, but it's not good for onigiri. You want rice that is warm, comfortably warm, like a cup of tea you can hold with both hands. Let's shape our first onigiri. Put a plastic cutting board on the counter. I'll explain the plastic part, because it isn't random. Rice sticks to wood very easily. It gets into the grain of the board and leaves a sticky layer that you'll be scraping off for a while. A plastic board, or even a clean plate, lets the rice slide off much more easily. For this first one we're using an onigiri mold. It's a small plastic triangle with a lid that presses down from the top. It's the easiest method by far because the mold decides the shape for you. Your only job is getting the layers right. I like it for mornings when I'm packing several lunches and I'm only half awake. They're inexpensive and easy to find online but you don't need one. I'll show you two other methods later that need no special tools. First, put a layer of rice into the bottom of the mold. You want it about a third full, just enough to cover the bottom completely. Then, use your finger to make a small hollow in the center, like a little nest. Sprinkle a small pinch of salt over the rice. Onigiri rice is normally seasoned only with salt, and it makes a bigger difference than you'd expect. Plain rice is mild. A little salt makes it taste like rice, if that makes sense. It brings the flavor forward. Now put about one tablespoon of the spicy tuna into the hollow. Keep it in the center away from the edges. This is where people often go wrong and I understand why. You've made a delicious filling so naturally you want a lot of it in there. But if you overstuff the onigiri, there isn't enough rice around the filling to hold it in place. The wall of rice gets too thin and the filling pushes out the side when you press or it collapses when you bite it. Aim for at least a finger's thickness of rice on every side of the filling, top and bottom included. One tablespoon is enough for a medium onigiri. The first bite might be mostly rice, but that's how it's supposed to be. The filling is the reward in the middle. Now add another layer of rice on top, enough to cover the filling completely, and fill the mold almost to the top. Place the press on top and push down firmly and evenly. Not with all your body weight, just a solid steady press for a second or two. Then hold the press down with one hand while you lift the mold up and away with the other. Holding the press stops the onigiri from coming up with the mold. And there it is, a neat triangle of rice. Now for the nori, the dried seaweed sheet. Take one full sheet and fold it in half. Run your finger along the fold to make a sharp crease. Unfold it, fold it back the other way along the same line, and crease it again. Folding it both ways weakens the line, so you can just pull the two halves apart and they'll separate cleanly along the crease. No scissors needed. Lay your onigiri on one end of a half sheet, fold the nori up over the front and back, and tuck the sides around it. This is a classic onigiri. You'll notice I'm using a fairly big piece of nori. In stores, you often see a narrow strip wrapped around the bottom. That's fine, and it's traditional too. But I like a larger piece, because it works like a wrapper. It covers more of the rice, so your fingers don't get sticky, and it holds the shape together better as you eat, especially if your filling is soft. With a small strip, the top half of the onigiri is unsupported, and that's usually where it breaks. If you prefer the narrow strip, use the same crease and tear trick to divide the half sheet into thirds. One full sheet then covers six onigiri. One more thing about this classic style. The nori goes on right before you eat. Once the nori touches warm, moist rice, it starts absorbing that moisture. Within half an hour it goes from crisp to soft and chewy. Some people actually prefer it soft. My father always wrapped his onigiri the night before, so the seaweed was completely soft by lunchtime, and he insisted that was the correct way. But if you like it crisp, wrap it at the last minute, or keep watching, because I'll show you a fix for that soon. If that was the first onigiri you've ever shaped, congratulations. That's honestly the hardest part, and it only gets easier from here. If you'd like more everyday Japanese cooking like this, Subscribing is the easiest way to catch the next one. Now, our second onigiri, the mazakomi. Mazakomi means mixed in. With the first onigiri, the filling weighted in the middle. With this one, we mix the ingredients into the rice before shaping, so the flavor is spread evenly from edge to edge. In my house, this is the one my wife asks for. She always starts eating an onigiri from a corner, and with a filled one, she says the first few bites are just practice. For our mix-ins today, we're using spam and egg. Spam is actually very popular in Japan, especially in Okinawa, where people eat it in all kinds of dishes, including rice balls. It's salty, savory, and goes perfectly with plain rice. Open your can of spam. You don't need the whole thing for this. About a third of the can is plenty for the batch of rice we have. Spam is strong tasting, so a little goes a long way. Slice that third into thin slabs, cut the slabs into thin strips, and then cut the strips across into small cubes. Keep them small, about the size of a pea or a little bigger. Small pieces spread evenly through the rice. Big chunks make the onigiri lumpy and break the shape apart when you press it. Wrap up the rest of the Spam and put it in the fridge. It will be breakfast tomorrow with an egg. That's a promise. Next, crack one egg into a small bowl. Just one. Add a small pinch of salt, and if you like, a small pinch of sugar. The sugar is optional, but in Japan, a lot of home-cooked egg dishes are slightly sweet, like Tamagoyaki, the rolled omelette. A little sugar balances the saltiness of the Spam and makes the whole thing taste rounder. If you don't like sweet eggs, leave it out. Beat the egg well with chopsticks or a fork. Here's something worth saying about onigiri in general. It is one of the most forgiving foods there is. The shape and the rice stay the same, but what goes inside is almost completely up to you. Leftover grilled chicken from last night, chop it small and mix it in. A bit of cooked salmon? Flake it in? Some corn and a little butter and soy sauce? Wonderful. Even a few spoonfuls of leftover seasoned ground beef make a great onigiri, as long as you drain off the extra liquid. The rules are just two. Keep the pieces small and keep them dry, not saucy. Everything else is up to you. Onigiri are for making the most of what you already have. Now let's cook. I'm using a non-stick frying pan here simply because it's easy. Put it over medium-high heat. You don't need oil for the spam because it releases its own fat as it cooks. Add the cubed spam and spread it out in one layer. Let it sit for a minute Since the pieces are small, it only takes a few minutes. before you stir You want browned edges and a little crispness, so it can brown. which adds a lot of flavor. When it looks golden on a few sides, take the spam out of the pan and set it aside on a plate. Don't wipe the pan. The fat that came out of the spam is going to cook our egg. That fat carries a lot of flavor and it's a shame to waste it. Turn the heat down a little to medium and pour in the beaten egg. Tilt the pan and spread the egg out into a thin, flat layer, like a thin crepe. We don't want soft, fluffy, scrambled eggs here. Big wet curds of egg add moisture to the rice, and as I said, moisture is not our friend. A thin, flat sheet cooks quickly, dries a little, and is easy to chop into tiny pieces later. When the bottom is set and the top is mostly cooked, Flip the egg over to finish the second side. If it tears while you flip it, just turn the pieces one at a time. This egg is about to be cut up, so its looks don't matter. Once both sides are set, slide the egg onto a clean plate. Don't put it back into the bowl you beat it in, because the raw egg clinging to the sides won't reliably cook from the heat of the omelet. Now let's mix it into the rice. If you're only making mazakomi onigiri with the whole batch, you could add everything straight into the rice cooker pot and mix it all there. Since I'm making three different kinds today, I'm moving about a third of the rice into a separate bowl and leaving the rest plain for our last onigiri. Into the rice go the spam, The egg and a few shakes of furikake. Furikake is a Japanese rice seasoning, a dry sprinkle usually made with toasted sesame seeds, bits of nori, salt, a little sugar, and sometimes dried fish flakes or dried egg. There are dozens of flavors. It's one of the easiest ways to make plain rice interesting. Many U.S. supermarkets now carry one or two kinds in the international aisle, and Asian grocery stores usually have a whole shelf of them. Now take your rice paddle and use the edge to cut the egg sheet into small pieces right in the bowl. Then fold everything together, scooping from the bottom and turning it over, just like we fluffed the rice earlier. Use a cutting and folding motion, not a heavy stirring motion. If you stir hard, you'll mash the rice and it'll get pasty. As for how much furikake, start with a little, mix it in, and taste. Some furikake is quite salty, so it's easy to overdo it, especially with salty spam in the mix. Add more if it tastes plain. When everything is evenly mixed, we can shape it. This time we're not using the mold. We're using plastic wrap. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap on the counter, a little bigger than a hand. Scoop about 150 grams of rice onto the center. That's roughly a heaping half cup, or about the size of a tennis ball. You really don't need to weigh it. I almost never do. Just make them all about the same size so they look nice together. Now pick up the four corners of the plastic wrap. Bring them together over the rice and twist them so the wrap is tight around the rice. That tightness is important. If the wrap is loose it wrinkles and it leaves dents and creases on the surface of the onigiri. Now hold it in your hands. Your bottom hand stays fairly flat like a small tray. Your top hand curves into a cup shape with your fingers bent and slightly together like the roof of a little house. That bent top hand creates the corner of the triangle. Give it a gentle squeeze, then rotate it a third of the way around in your palm and squeeze again. Three squeezes make three corners. Go around two or three times and the shape firms up. Once the shape is almost there, use the flat part of your fingers, mainly your middle and ring fingers, to press the sides a little flatter. That turns a rounded lump into a proper triangle with clean, flat faces. Then check from every side, adjust where it needs it, and you're done. Untwist the plastic and peel it off, and you have a hand-shaped mazakomi onigiri. Your hands never touch the rice, and you can make several of these in a row without washing up in between. The plastic wrap method is also great for kids. My son was about seven when he started making his own onigiri with plastic wrap, and the first few looked more like small potatoes than triangles. But they held together, and he was so proud of them, he ate three. That's what matters. Now, about the nori, because I promised a fix for soggy seaweed. If you're going to eat this onigiri now, just wrap it in nori like before and eat it. But if you're packing it for lunch and want it to be crisp four hours later, try these special onigiri wrapping sheets. It's exactly the same idea as the convenience store onigiri in Japan. The sheet of nori sits between two layers of thin plastic film, so it never touches the rice until you open it. The rice stays moist, the nori stays dry, and they only meet at the moment you eat it. You can buy these online in packs, often around 50 sheets. They cost more per sheet than ordinary nori because each sheet comes with its own two-layer film. But if you pack lunches often, they're really convenient. To use one, put the sheet face down following the printed instructions. Most have numbered steps. Put the onigiri on one end of the sheet and fold the top over it. Then fold in each side and fix them in place with the little stickers that come in the pack. If you lose the stickers, which happens in my kitchen more often than I'd like to admit, a small piece of tape does the same job. When it's time to eat, find the tab, usually a colored strip at the top, and pull it straight down and around the onigiri. That splits the plastic in the middle. Then gently pull each side of the plastic off to the left and to the right. The nori is left behind, Wrapped around the rice. The nori snaps cleanly when you bite through it and then you get soft rice, Spam, egg, and furikake. This is a very good lunch. Now our last onigiri, the yaki onigiri. Yaki means grilled or cooked over heat. It's cooked in a frying pan with just a film of oil then brushed with a sauce until the outside turns crisp and toasty. In Japan you'll often find yaki onigiri at izakaya pubs at the end of the evening or cooked over charcoal at barbecues. At home a frying pan works perfectly. While we're at it, I'll show you how to shape onigiri with nothing but your bare hands. And I'll show you how to make your own crisp nori wrapper at home with nothing more than things you probably already have in a kitchen drawer. First, the glaze. This is what we'll brush on the onigiri while they're in the pan. And since there's nothing inside these, the glaze does all the seasoning. In a small bowl, mix two tablespoons of soy sauce, which we call shoyu, one tablespoon of mirin, and one tablespoon of brown sugar. Mirin is a sweet Japanese rice wine for cooking. It adds sweetness and gives a nice gloss when it cooks. If you can't find it, you can use a little extra sugar with a splash of water, but it's worth having mirin in your pantry if you cook Japanese food. Stir until most of the brown sugar has dissolved. A thin store-bought teriyaki sauce can stand in for it in a pinch. Just avoid the thick, gloopy kind, because a thick sauce will burn before the rice crisps. Now, the rice. We're shaping by hand this time, with no wrap. So first, take off rings and bracelets. Rice gets stuck in them, and wet jewelry and sticky rice aren't a good combination. Then wash your hands well with soap and dry them. With this method, your palms are touching the food directly, so treat them like any other kitchen tool. Set a small bowl of water next to you and dissolve a generous pinch of salt in it. This salt water does two jobs. The water keeps the rice from sticking to your palms. The salt gives a thin, even layer of seasoning to the outside of the onigiri as you shape it. This is the traditional method in Japan and it's the reason a lot of plain onigiri tastes so good. All the seasoning sits on the outside, right where your tongue touches first. Dip your fingers in the salt water and rub your palms together so your hands are damp all over. Not dripping, just damp. Too much water makes the surface of the rice soggy. The first time I made onigiri this way as a boy, I didn't wet my hands at all because I didn't think it mattered. In about 10 seconds, half the rice was stuck to my fingers and the other half had become a sad, flat pancake. Wet hands make all the difference. If the rice starts sticking at any point, wet your hands again. You'll probably need to do it after every onigiri, sometimes in the middle of one. Scoop about 150 grams of the plain rice into your palm. Again, it's about the size of a tennis Now, before shaping, let me talk about pressure, ball and you don't need to be precise. because this is the part that takes practice. You need to press firmly enough that the rice holds together, but gently enough that the grains don't get crushed. A good onigiri is firm on the outside and soft, and a little airy on the inside. When you bite into it, the grains should separate a bit in your mouth instead of being one dense brick. If you squeeze too hard, it becomes heavy and pasty, almost like rice cake. And it isn't pleasant to eat. If you press too lightly, it won't survive the trip from the counter to the pan. A good way to think of it is how you'd hold a ripe peach to check whether it's ready. Firm, but careful. The motion is the same as with the plastic wrap. Flat bottom hand, bent top hand. Squeeze and rotate, the same as before, until the triangle forms, then use your fingers to flatten the sides a little. With a little practice, each one takes well under a minute. For yaki onigiri, there's one more thing worth doing. Make it slightly flatter and more compact than a normal onigiri. A thinner onigiri heats through more evenly, and the flat sides make good contact with the pan, which gives a better crust. It also helps it hold together when it gets flipped. You might wonder why we're not putting a filling in these. Traditionally, yaki onigiri are plain. The glaze and the crisp crust are the flavor, so there's no need for anything inside. A filling also creates a weak spot in the middle, which makes flipping them in the pan more difficult. That said, if you want to hide a little something in the center, go ahead. It's your lunch. Repeat with the rest of the plain rice until you have your onigiri lined up on the cutting board. Now the pan. For this one, use a non-stick pan if you have one. Cooked rice is full of starch, and starch acts like glue against bare metal. The glaze makes it worse, because the sugar caramelizes and bonds to the pan. A well-seasoned cast iron pan can work with a little extra oil, but for a first try, non-stick is the safe choice. Set the pan over medium-high heat and add just a small amount of neutral oil, like vegetable or canola oil. Spread it all over the surface with a paper towel. We only want a thin film to keep the rice from sticking, not a layer of oil to fry in. Take one onigiri and brush a thin coat of glaze on one flat side. And I mean thin. This is the most common mistake with yaki onigiri. If you soak it in sauce, the liquid runs into the rice, softens it from the inside, and your onigiri falls apart in the pan. A light coat is all you need. You'll add more in layers as it cooks. Place it glaze side down in the pan. Do the same with the others, Leaving a little space between them. Now leave them alone for a couple of minutes. You can press each one gently with a spatula once or twice so the whole surface touches the pan, but don't keep poking at them or moving them around. The crust forms when the rice sits still against the hot surface. Keep an eye on the heat. The brown sugar and mirin in the glaze contain sugar, and sugar can go from caramelized to burnt very quickly If you notice a bitter, burnt smell, or see the edges going black, turn the heat down a little. You're looking for a deep golden brown.