Onigiri is what rice becomes when it has to travel — to a lunch box, onto a train, up a hill. There is no technique to learn. You cook rice, you decide what goes inside, and you shape it in your hand through a sheet of plastic wrap. The only thing worth knowing before you start is how much rice to cook.
One bowl of rice makes one onigiri. One rice-cooker cup of raw rice — one gō — makes two or three. That is the whole calculation, and the range is just how big you make them. At the size we make here, one cup gives two: two cups make four, enough for two people to have two each; three cups make six, enough for three. Everything below is just what to put inside.
If the rice itself is the part you are unsure about, we wrote that down separately: how to cook Japanese rice in a pot, no rice cooker needed.
Makes 4 onigiri · About 20 minutes, once the rice is cooked
Ingredients
- Warm cooked Japanese rice, made from 2 rice-cooker cups (2 gō) of uncooked rice — about 4 rice bowls
- A little salt
- 1 sheet of roasted nori, cut into 4 bands — optional
For each onigiri, one of these
- Ume, shiso and sesame — 1 umeboshi, pitted and minced, 2 shiso leaves thinly sliced, 1 tsp toasted white sesame seeds. This one is mixed through the rice.
- Salted salmon — about 1 Tbsp, cooked and flaked. This one goes in the middle.
- Kombu tsukudani — about 1 Tbsp. Also in the middle.
- Salt and nothing else — the simplest one, and a common sight in a lunch box. Just a little more salt on the outside.
One rice-cooker cup is 180 ml. We measure with a 15 ml tablespoon and a 5 ml teaspoon.
How to make it
- Divide the warm rice. Four portions, about a rice bowl each. Sprinkle a little salt over each one — a little more if you are making a plain one.
- Put the filling in — there are two ways. For the ume, shiso and sesame version, fold everything through the rice so that every bite has some. For salmon or kombu tsukudani, the filling goes in the middle: spread most of one portion of rice on a sheet of plastic wrap, set the filling in the center, and cover it with the rice you held back.
- Shape it through the wrap. Gather the wrap up around the rice and shape it in your hand into a triangle, pressing just a few times. Rice shaped this way keeps its air; pressed hard, it turns heavy by the next morning. If a triangle is difficult, or you are shaping them with children, make them round.
- Show what is inside. Once it holds together, put a little of the filling on top. It is how everyone at the table knows which is which without opening one, and it is the reason a plate of onigiri looks like a plate of onigiri.
- Nori, if you are eating them today. Wrap a band around the middle. For crisp nori, add it just before eating; left on, it softens against the rice, which is its own kind of good. If they are going into the freezer, leave it off and wrap it on the morning you eat them.
One now, the rest later
Eat one warm. Freeze the others still in their wrap, and a few minutes in the microwave brings them back — one in the morning, one in a lunch box, one as a late-night snack. In Japan we eat them at any hour, or take them up a mountain.
Tip
If you are cooking the rice anyway, the plums can go in with it: 2 rice-cooker cups of rice, 2 umeboshi, and 1 Tbsp shiro-dashi in the cooking water, with the sesame stirred through at the end. Most shiro-dashi is made with bonito, so that version is not vegan; leave it out and the recipe is. If you avoid wheat, check the label — the soy sauce in it usually contains some.
This one came to the table with kenchin-jiru, made the night before and finished with miso the next day.
Part of The Sunday Batch — small things made ahead, for easier weekday mornings.
