A Delicious Rice Ball
Onigiri (お握り) is essentially a rice ball that can be filled with various ingredients. In general, the most iconic look is normally rice molded into a rounded triangular shape and wrapped with nori (seaweed). Salted, sticky, short-grained, white rice is generally used, and it isn’t seasoned the same way as sushi rice (vinegar, sugar and salt).
Ingredients Used for Fillings
There are a lot different fillings for onigiri and below is a list of some common choices you’d see in a convenience store.
- Tuna with mayonnaise/shrimp with mayonnaise, etc.
- Umeboshi (pickled plums)
- Tempura
- Okaka (bonito and soy sauce)
- Chicken Karaage
- Mentaiko (spicy pollock roe)
These aren’t all the possible fillings, but they should give you an idea of what you might find in an onigiri.
Different Types of Onigiri
The triangular shaped onigiri is probably the most common shape people imagine, but it’s not the only kind. For instance, other common shapes are cylinders and flattened round balls. There are even cutouts you can buy to shape the rice into bunnies or other fun shapes. In reality, as long as the rice sticks together you can make onigiri into whatever shape you want.
Along with shapes, there are also different ways to wrap with nori. While you don’t have to wrap onigiri, it is recommended as the rice is very sticky and the nori helps to give you a place to hold it. You can even use the nori as decorations, like making faces. Alternatively, if you don’t want to use nori, then you can use something like nozawana zuke (pickled mustard leaves) or other seaweed/leafy plants to wrap.
Sometimes onigiri are sprinkled with sesame seeds or dried shiso leaf powder instead of being wrapped. Other times they have ingredients like green peas or furikake (a Japanese seasoning) mixed into the rice instead of fillings.
There are a lot of different types beyond what I mentioned above. For the most part as long as the rice is made up of short or medium sticky rice (it doesn’t have to be white rice) and it’s formed into some sort of shape, then it could be considered onigiri. It can be that simple, which makes it a great food to try and make at home, especially if you’ve never tried it!
