Onigiri Rice Balls Recipe with Hana! - Pai's Kitchen
# Making Perfect Onigiri: A Step-by-Step Guide with Hana
Welcome to Pai’s Kitchen! Today, we’re thrilled to have Hana as our guest chef. Hana is no stranger to the culinary world; she was the co-host of the television series *OneWorld Kitchen* and the author of *Let’s Cook Japanese*, a cookbook that showcases her deep understanding of Japanese cuisine. Growing up with a Japanese mother and a German father, Hana learned to cook at a young age, honing her skills while living in Japan and even writing a food column during her time there. Her expertise makes her an invaluable guide for today’s recipe: onigiri.
## What Are Onigiri?
Onigiri are Japanese rice balls that resemble a sandwich due to their ability to hold various fillings inside. They’re perfect for packing in your lunchbox and enjoying on the go. Hana mentions that onigiri are widely available at convenience stores in Japan, such as 7-Eleven, and are known for being affordable and healthy.
## Choosing the Right Rice
The foundation of any great onigiri lies in the rice. Hana emphasizes the importance of using Japanese short grain rice, which is stickier than other types. If you can’t find Japanese rice at your local grocery store, she recommends looking for premium medium or short grain rice. She also highlights an alternative: *Hida* rice, a hybrid that retains the nutrients of brown rice while offering the texture of white rice.
## Preparing and Cooking the Rice
Proper preparation is key to achieving perfect rice. Hana demonstrates the process of washing and polishing the rice grains to remove excess starch, which prevents the rice from becoming gummy when cooked. She uses about a cup and a third of water per cup of rice, but advises checking the package instructions for specific measurements.
## Making the Filling
For today’s recipe, Hana opts for tuna salad as the filling. She uses canned tuna, Japanese mayonnaise (known as *Kewpie Mayo*), and a touch of miso paste. The combination of creamy mayo and umami-rich miso creates a flavor profile that is both familiar and elevated. Hana also introduces yuzu kosho, a pungent paste made from the yuzu citrus fruit and chilies, adding a unique dimension to the filling.
## Seasoning the Rice
To enhance the flavor of the rice, Hana uses *onigiri seasoning*, which can be mixed into the rice while it’s still warm. This adds an extra layer of umami and helps the rice stick together when forming the balls.
## Forming the Onigiri
After mixing the rice with the seasoning, it’s time to form the onigiri. Hana demonstrates two classic shapes: the triangular shape and the flattened disc. For the triangular shape, she suggests creating small mounds of rice and pressing them together. For the flattened shape, she simply presses the rice into a disc.
## Wrapping with Nori
The finishing touch is wrapping the onigiri with nori (seaweed). Hana prefers using large sheets of seasoned nori, which adds a crispy texture and subtle flavor. She shows how to cut the nori into thirds or halves, depending on preference, and wraps it around the rice ball.
## Serving Suggestions
Onigiri are traditionally eaten at room temperature, making them ideal for packing in a lunchbox. Hana also mentions that grilled onigiri should be eaten hot, as grilling enhances the toasty flavor of the rice.
## Conclusion
Hana’s expertise and passion for Japanese cuisine shine through as she shares tips for selecting ingredients, preparing rice, and forming perfect onigiri. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and her step-by-step instructions make this recipe accessible even for beginners.
For more recipes and culinary insights, be sure to check out Hana’s website, linked in the video description. We’d love to see your creations—send us photos on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!
Thank you for joining us today, Hana! It was an absolute pleasure to learn from you. Until next time, happy cooking!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone welcome to pai's kitchen I am so excited I've got my very first guest chef on the show today this is Hana some of you may recognize her she was my co-host on the television series OneWorld kitchen and she's also the author of let's cooking Japanese cookbook before we get started tell us a little bit about how you learn to be so good at Japanese cooking well I grew up with a Japanese mom and your dad is my dad is German half Japanese half German that's a pretty cool mix and I just learned how to cook for my mom and so of course we were cooking Japanese food at home and later I lived in Japan for a few years and while I was there I was you know learning even more and also writing a Japanese food column while I was there oh there you go tons of experience I'm so excited to have you share some of that with us so tell us what we're gonna make okay today and we are going to make onigiri which are Japanese rice balls yeah I like to think of them as a Japanese sandwich because you put all sorts of fillings inside so there's a huge variety and it's like a little thing you can pack and go and take in your lunchbox cool and I heard that these are actually available at 7-eleven in Japan is that right yes I love convenience stores in Japan because you can get on eet they're so cheap and they're healthy that's awesome let's get started so the most important ingredient for the rice balls is obviously rice right so what kind of rice are we using okay it's very important when making onigiri to use Japanese rice I have this bag that I got at the Asian market but if you don't have an Asian market close by these are a couple of the brands that you can find at a regular grocery store yeah I recognize those really what you're looking for is premium grade medium or short grain rice the medium or short grain are the ones that's a little bit more sticky and it will stick to itself this is not sticky rice though right right so sticky rice is called mochi Goma it's for desserts mostly it's okay very very sticky so just look for and we're short grain premium premium rice so you can use brown rice yeah but because brown rice doesn't stick to itself very much right use at least half white rice and brown rice okay so there is one other alternative and it's halfway between brown rice and white rice and I actually brought it here for you so you can see I love it okay so this is tyga rice so HIDA rice they've taken off all of the brand but they have left the germ which is that little teeny part of the rice that has almost all the nutrients in it oh so you get most of the health benefits of brown rice but with more the texture of white rice white rice so it's kind of like that Wonder Bread you know the the brown white bread that they yeah a while ago brilliant but better all right cooking the rice now when you are prepping this I noticed you were doing things slightly different from the way Thai people do things so explain to us what is the process of prepping this rice for cooking the most important part about preparing and cooking Japanese rice is washing it and polishing it there is a little bit of rice flour on there from the milling process and if you just cook it like that it will get really gloopy put water in and we really really polish the grains I think think of it kind of like kneading bread the action that I do and then I rinse it several times until the water runs clear so you guys it's the same idea as when I make fried rice I always talk about washing the rice many times because when you make fried rice if you don't wash it all that excess starch is going to keep them sticking together so how much water do we use about a cup and a third per cup of rice but every race is different so look on the bag check to see if that has some instructions and if not just use a cup and a third of water for one cup of rice all right filling what are we doing for filling okay so for onigiri you can put anything you want in it it's just like a sandwich but we are going to do one of the most common on giddy feelings tuna salad which is really surprising I didn't think tuna salad was a particularly job Panisse thing but it is it's super popular in Japan so we've got just regular can of tuna and it doesn't have to be Japanese tune or anything handy Cantona at the star will work and now I'm really I love this Mayo this is some of you may know what this is Japanese Mayo also known as Kewpie mayonnaise you BA Mayo and it's a bottle in a bag so how is this different from regular Mayo Japanese Mayo is sweeter and creamier and what I love about this there's a little like started typing so the Japanese think of everything so when you put your mayonnaise on your tuna it's beautiful okay so that's standard tuna salad but we're gonna jazz it up a little bit with miso okay so when I go to an Asian grocery store and when I buy a miso it's quite overwhelming because there's literally I mean there's just 12 different kind and nothing is in English so what can we do to pick the sort of the all-purpose yummy so when you go into the meat so aisle it can be anything from a very light creamy colored miso yeah all the way to like a very deep brown chocolatey color but if you look for something that's kind of a dark beige or a light brown yeah that will probably be the best to use on all different kinds of recipes and I love how she said we got to use chopsticks to mix yes I like to think of them as extensions of my fingers when I'm cooking Japanese flavor number two is one of my favorites are you familiar with the citrus fruit yuzu yes I believe I've actually seen the actual fruit it looks like a little mandarin orange right yeah yeah it's very tiny it's more sour and floral flavored they make this wonderful kind of peppery paste out of it great yuzu Kosho mmm Wow that's R it's really pungent it's very pungent so you only want to use a very little bit if you like the flavor then you can add more you know it's tuna salad just make it to you like it's a salad just do whatever you wantmmm so do you need any more miso or use a Kosho can you taste those flavors in there I definitely taste the miso okay I love that that's the best tuna salad ever but I want I want a little bit more kosher this is just really powerful so yeah he uses a little lot of time because yet always at but you can't take away it's true so I'm gonna let you taste it so you can yeah can I give you a cool chopsticks trick yeah yeah okay you want to taste without sharing your germs you use the back of the trap sticks this is why I bring her on mmm we have done a very good job oh thank you thank you okay so that's our filling now what else could we put in it so these are a few super Japanese ones this is called takuna which is a pickled mustard green and then this one is called puck one pickle really classic kind of a yellow pickle that sometimes you get inside your sushi right that's the kind of pickle it's made with a daikon radish radish yeah umeboshi pickled plum it is a sour plum right that has been preserved so it's got a really powerful salty sour flavor and it's pickled with shred shiso leaves so it's quite like floral so it's a strong flavor but good yeah so that is like the most classic thing you can eat with your rice because when you put this on a bowl of rice and breaks like the Japanese flag uh well what do you know so many good information and Lasley that's familiar yeah so this is some shrimp that you had left from a previous recipe so we just finished filming my episode of Gumo Quinton and Hana saw this and she said can I use that Junia point yeah that's really the idea and sometimes you know you have like a bits of meat that are leftover yeah it's just like a tiny piece and you feel bad throwing it away but you really can't do anything with it or you're at a restaurant and you feel bad taking home a tiny little bit eyebrow you have an excuse yeah to not look cheap because you're gonna use it for something yeah okay so we're all set to stuff our onigiri with the different fillings but you can add seasoning to the rice in your ammonia tea too this is special onigiri rice seasoning that's what it's made for right it is made for either putting in your own IDI or just sprinkling on top of your rice and just eating like that so if you're just having a bowl of rice and you think like her needs a little extra flavor you buy Annie Oakley off or there are many many many more of what's called foodie cocky seasoning so I'm going to put some of this stuff in so you want to make your own EGD while the rice is still at least quite warm and that will help it stick together so we can just mix our seasoning in all the tools and equipment she brings on is so cute including this bowl not as cute as your tiny whisk my time is so good so here's the fun part take your rice bowl and wow it was a terribly mixed Buttle but that's okay we're gonna call it a design element now we just choose our filling and put it in the middle a tablespoon or so is it with a tiny little bit of filling it really is if you put too much filling in it will be very hard to make the rice stick to it yeah right so if I want to put the plums one whole plum in one yep plum you lift the corners of your saran wrap and this is the part where you want to kind of bring the rice over top of your filling and I mean with yours you could really just push that plum right in as we do it and you can see you can just pack it pretty lightly it should stick together you don't have to really you know squish it too hard right and if you want to keep it in kind of a flat disc shape you can but that classic Japanese onigiri shape is a triangle so here's how you do it make a little mountain with one hand and you push that into the top of your own EGD so and then you rotate and press so you make three mountain tops and usually have to do it a few times look at you made a very beautiful your very first try would have been very well done now we can wrap it with a piece of no D now is my favorite part of onigiri which is the seaweed that goes on on the outside yeah you can use this kind which is a regular kind of Noda you would use for sushi some of those seaweed packs that you use for snacks and lashes yeah I grew up on these like I ate an enormous amount of these growing up they're really popular in Thailand they're delicious the note e is the same but they're seasoned right so you remember that kind of salty and flavor for one of these big sheets I like to cut it in thirds you could even just cut it in half and completely cover the entire onigiri I just take on one side and I have lots of no tea right a really nice handle and it's crispy on the outside you get that bit of crunch before you bite into the soft hot rice mmm see that's good but I never see that when they sell only here it's always a tiny little piece trip and I think that's mostly just to be economical if you're selling it in yeah big scale yeah if you're making it at home you can have luxury Omega with a lot um money yes I like that idea now if you were to pack this though you wouldn't want to put the the nori on it right because I get soggy right so what you can do is you could pre-cut it and put it in a little ziplock bag you know a little sandwich bag and take it with and then when you unwrap it on your picnic or at your lunch or whatever then you can just put the seaweed on moments before you eat it can you show us other ways to wrap it okay so I've got one plain one one with shiso just cut a square or almost a square and just use the corner to point up at the top of that little mountain peak and you get a little corner if you offset it it's asymmetrical is that and then the second one take a long strip and then you kind of wrap it as though you are putting a shawl around your shoulder dude and there you go we're now going to take on Iggy from day tonight we're taking our own Iggy to the pub I like that so we're gonna make pub food yes yesso before we wrap up here I just wanted to show you a little onigiri paraphernalia um this is the cutest thing ever it's a little onigiri rice got little box and you couldn't take I mean ah this is a cute overload and you can actually what I end up doing is I stuck the rice in here in the saran wrap and then it just ended up being a mold as y'all and then there's this bag according to the package you just stuffed the rice in here and somehow this back will help you and it ends up packaging it if you don't have these amazing cute specialty containers so you can just wrap them in saran wrap and pop them in your lunchbox yeah or stick them in your freezer as well in the saran wrap oh and then and then so that's how you would long-term store it in the freezer and then your freezer microwave it on that subject are these supposed to be eaten room-temperature yes okay so you make it in the morning take it to Europe take it to lunch and you don't need to reheat it at lunch exactly except for the grilled ones which you should eat hot off the grill alright and that's exactly what we're gonna do ready yes it's a vacuum Oz hmm we did a great job with this tuna salad I'm surprised how flavorful this is excellent that's the basting of the soy sauce but also just when you grill the rice it gets really toasty it does and you know I use toasted rice powder in Thai cooking all the time and so it's sort of the same right yeah right where's the recipe going to be so the recipe will be on my website or website and I will put her webster link to her website in the description of this video so you can go and check that out and see what else she's got to offer and when you make these send us a photo Facebook Twitter Instagram send the MA nowhere I'd love to see how you make these different kinds of fillings and I will include some of them in my newsletter and don't forget to subscribe to the show so you can see more cool things like this and you'll be back yes I will yank you so much for having no it was so much fun I love having someone else on the show and do half the work no it was something I learned I learned so much and I hope you guys learned a lot too if you've got questions you can either get in touch with her directly she's also got a Facebook Twitter Instagram yeah you can get in touch with her then or you can pass them on to me whatever you want and we will see you next time for your next delicious adventure you can kind of like compare oh yeah she's a brown right yeah cause that's girl alright I like how excited you guys oh that was good woo\n"