Onigiri, a Japanese convenience food, are balls of rice with something, often just salted plum, in the center. They can be served plain or rolled in nori, sesame seeds, or furikake, a blend of those ingredients and more. However they're prepared, they're easy to eat and a quick treat often picked up in 7-11 or Family Mart in lieu of a proper meal. Well, I was invited to a colleague's home for a potluck party a year or two ago, and couldn't decide what to bring. Usually, I wait till a mood strikes me, then make something from whatever I have on hand, but for this dish, I had to do a little shopping, but it was well worth the effort.
Of course, I couldn't simply replicate something I'd eaten before. Where would be the risk in doing that? I decided instead to merge onigiri with one of my favorite Japanese bar foods, tsukune, chicken meatballs. Here's what I did.
First, I minced fresh ginger, garlic, and scallions and mixed it with chicken that I had ground myself. I added some sesame oil and soy to the meat to give it a bit more flavor, though I probably didn't need to do this (see step two!). An egg yolk helped to bind it all together. I shaped the meat into tiny little balls about 3/4 of an inch in diameter, set them in a single layer on a cookie sheet, and chilled them covered in the fridge for about half an hour to make them easier to handle.
Second, I brought water to boil in a stock pot and added the ginger peels and some soy sauce to the water to enhance the flavor of the meatballs (or at least not to diminish their flavor!). I put the meatballs into the gently boiling water and cooked them until they floated to the surface, then drained them, storing them in the refrigerator as soon as possible. I had to cook them in batches, as I made enough for a party, but how long this takes will depend on how many you make.
While they cooled, I put some good Japanese rice into my rice cooker. It's important that you use short-grain Asian rice that gets sticky—no dry American rice here—or the balls will never stick together. After the rice finished cooking, I stirred it up to make it stickier. I didn't want the rice to cool completely; in fact, I wanted it to cool just enough for me to handle it. While it cooled, I put soy sauce, sesame oil, and katsu sauce in a skillet and cooked it down a bit till it thickened. After a quick roll around in the sauce, the meatballs looked as they do in the first picture.
By then, the rice had cooled just enough to handle, so I laid out a tray to put the finished onigiri on and set out a bowl of cold water to dip my hands into when they got sticky from the starch in the rice. I took a fistful of the still-hot sticky rice and flattened it in my palm, put a meatball in the center, and wrapped the rest of the rice around it. It was challenging at first to get just enough rice—too little, and it wouldn't form around the meatball; too much and the proportions would be wrong—but
after making a few, I got the hang of it. After all the onigiri were assembled, I rolled some of them in freshly toasted sesame seeds, then stacked them on a serving tray.
If you can't eat them right away, refrigerate them, but they taste best close to room temperature, so be sure to take them out of the fridge a bit early so they can warm up a bit. Don't reheat them, though, or they just might fall apart.
They were a big hit, and as far as I know, they are my own original fusion of two traditional Japanese foods.
The final picture is of onigiri I made using pork-fried rice in the center and white rice as the wrapper. They were delicious, but much milder in flavor than the tsukune onigiri. I rolled them in freshly toasted sesame seeds and shredded Korean nori, which has sesame oil and more salt than many Japanese nori, but you could buy furikake at the supermarket with whatever blend of sesame and seasonings you prefer.
Hmm... I think I need to make more of these this weekend!
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