Playing with my Food

September 30, 2017

The other day I found this picture of panda onigiri invading Japanese curry lurking on facebook and felt inspired to try my hand at making these cute little treats. (And just in case you don't know what onigiri is, it is a Japanese rice ball that can be formed into fun shapes, filled and wrapped in seaweed).
First, let me say that cutting seaweed isn't incredibly easy so I started out with wonky shapes for the panda face. And trying to use brown rice (which is what I normally eat) didn't yield sticky results to easily mold the rice into balls. But they were sort of cute, nonetheless.
For my second attempt, I ended getting a triangle mold at my local Asian market and ditched the cute animal idea (but you can buy a panda mold that comes with a seaweed cutter). And I made a combo of white sushi rice and brown rice to make stickier rice.
The mold made it much easier and cleaner (but you can form the rice into triangles by hand---it's just kind of messy). I love how tasty and cute these are! They might become my new favorite snack to make.

Spicy Tuna Onigiri

  • make a pot of sushi rice 
  • season cooked rice with a seasoning of choice: soy sauce, rice vinegar or furikake (check out Food 52's tips on how to make onigiri for other seasoning ideas)
  • prepare a filling, I made a simple spicy tuna filling from A Beautiful Plate
  • fill half the triangle mold with seasoned rice, then add some filling into the mold and then cover the filling with more rice. then press the lid onto the triangle mold to shape the rice. 
  • flip out the rice from mold and wrap in seaweed (you can wrap the entire triangle in seaweed, or put a little strip of it onto the rice). 
  • enjoy!

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