Cooking rice balls: in the spirit of Japanese traditions. Japanese rice balls: cooking recipe

Japanese cuisine is not only healthy, but also diverse. In addition to the famous sushi, onigiri rice balls are no less popular, in which, unlike sushi and rolls, the filling is inside the rice, and resembles a pie. There are few simple and easily prepared dishes in Japanese cuisine, such as and.

The cuisine of the Land of the Rising Sun is, at its core, as complex as the French. The Japanese take into account all the subtleties to the smallest detail when cooking. The temperature of water, food, hand temperature, the mood and health of the cook. They carefully select seafood and sauces. After each meal, the Japanese traditionally drink a variety of green and white teas. But here it was, one of the dishes, which you can easily cook at home on its own, it does not require much effort and great skill, unlike sushi, this dish is onigiri. These rice balls are prepared with various fillings, while the Japanese use onigiri without sauces, wrapping a rice ball in a sheet of nori. Many mistakenly believe that this dish is one of the varieties of sushi, which is wrong. Onigiri- were invented as a way to store ready-made rice, when warriors went on a campaign they wrapped balls in seaweed and took them with them on the road. But sushi is a way of storing fish and seafood, fish is wrapped in rice, and rice is seaweed, and in this form they can be taken on the road.

All of them are cooked differently. Some form a rice cake, put the filling in the middle, put some more rice on top, and form balls. Others form balls and put the filling in the middle, and then reshape the desired shape. Over the years, onigiri recipes have become more varied, and the fillings have become more interesting and exotic. So, you can cook sweet onigiri by adding pineapple, mango, kiwi, pickled peaches as a filling. To make the dish exotic, add avocados and olives to the filling. In Japan, onigiri is served not only in the classic version, they are fried in oil and over an open fire. You will hardly find this simple and tasty Japanese dish in Russian restaurants, it is not as popular as in Japan. So make your own onigiri.

Onigiri in the original performance, in the style of "Angry Birds"

Once you try it, you will understand that it is not difficult at all. The process of making rice balls is very simple and does not require much effort. The main ingredient is rice, you need to take round rice, which is easy to mold and contains a lot of starch. It is best if you find rice of Japanese varieties for onigiri. Many stores offer sushi rice, which is ideal for onigiri. If you cook this dish as a dessert, be sure to serve it with good green tea. Enjoying the dish and drinking it with delicious tea, you will plunge into the atmosphere of Japan, where cherry blossoms bloom in beautiful gardens, and huge lotus flowers delight the eye and intoxicate with their delicate and tart aroma.

Onigiri are as popular in Japanese cuisine as sushi. These delicious koloboks have reached our countries quite recently. This is one of the few Japanese dishes that is prepared faster than sushi, and even easier. Sauces and toppings can be customized to taste.

Rice balls "Onigiri"

Required for cooking (based on 8 servings):

Cooking:

Rinse the rice in running water until the water runs clear.
Transfer the rice to a saucepan, add 5 cups of water, bring the water to a boil over high heat. Stir the rice occasionally.
Reduce the heat, cover the pot and cook the rice for 15 minutes until the water is completely absorbed into it.
After the rice is cooked, leave it to stand under the lid for another 15 minutes (so that it still swells). Then cool.
Wash the cucumber, and cut it into a large cube ().
Cream cheese and slightly salted red fish also cut into cubes.
In a separate bowl, dilute about 1.5 cups of water with salt (about 1.5 tsp of salt per cup).
Before working with rice, dip your hands in a lightly salted solution.
For 8 servings, divide the rice into 8 portions.
With wet hands, make a small ball out of rice, make a small indentation and place fish, 1 olive per 1 rice ball, cheese, cucumber (combine foods to taste) in it.
Then shape the onigiri into a triangular, cylindrical or rounded shape.
Sprinkle onigiri with sesame seeds and wrap in nori leaves.
Serve on a platter with pickled ginger and soy sauce.

simple japanese dish ready.

Total cooking time: 1 hour

A traditional dish Japan

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Different Ways to Make Onigiri

Still want to eat sushi? For those who live in Krasnoyarsk, there is a great opportunity to order them with home delivery - http://krasnoyarsk.restoratti.ru/dostavka/sushi. And it's delicious, and you don't have to spend your personal time preparing such a complex dish as sushi.

Onigiri are rice balls that are popular in Japan.
Onigiri is made from glutinous rice and then garnished with seaweed and other ingredients.)

Onigiri is a very common Japanese dish that looks like balls or voluminous triangles of rice with a variety of fillings. Most often, onigiri is also wrapped in dried seaweed, lettuce, sometimes in an omelette or thinly sliced ham.

Recipe
Rinse the rice under running water until the water runs clear. Place the rice in a saucepan and cover with 4.5 cups of water. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low, cover with lid. Simmer until all liquid is absorbed, 15 to 20 minutes. Let the rice stand covered for another 15 minutes so that it swells and softens properly. Then cool completely.

In a bowl, dilute 1 cup of water with salt. Dip your hands in the solution before handling the rice. Divide the rice into 8 parts - you will get 8 onigiri.
Divide each piece of rice into 2 pieces. In one half, make a neat recess
l and put 1 teaspoon of filling (bonito) into it. Close with the other half of the rice and squeeze lightly to seal the filling inside. Gently shape the rice into a triangle (traditional shape). You can also make oval or round (balls). Wrap the onigiri with a strip of nori and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Rice balls "Onigiri" according to the recipe from Scott Jurek's book Eat & Run + raw food version with chiya

The recipe for "rice balls" onigiri in Scott Jurek's book Eat and Run at first seemed too simple and even boring to me. But just today, on the day when I make preparations for cooking for the week, it came in handy: rice balls are convenient to take with you as a snack. For myself, instead of rice, I used soaked chiya seeds.

So, in the original, in Scott Jurek's book, the recipe was:

Rice balls (Onigiri)

The first time I saw these seaweed-wrapped rice cakes was when I asked a Japanese runner what he was carrying for the race. I'm glad I asked because rice is a wonderful food for lowering body temperature, especially in conditions like Death Valley. Rice is carbohydrate, onigiri is not too sweet and is soft and easy to digest. A wonderful source of electrolytes and salt (from seaweed), rice balls have always been a convenient snack in Japan. And now they can be found in any Asian supermarkets.

Rice balls, or onigiri, are a common Japanese dish. You may even have seen how in Japanese films or anime, heroes feast on them, swapping onigiri with various fillings with each other. You can try to touch the culture of a mysterious eastern country and cook one of the options for rice balls.

Cooking rice balls: video recipe

rice ball ingredients

There are many options for preparing rice balls, because you can use anything as a filling: fish, meat, cucumber, avocado, pickled vegetables and fruits. The main thing is that the filling is not sweet. Try this traditional Japanese recipe with salmon and umeboshi pickled plums. This dish can be great for use in Japanese diets.

For this you will need:

7 glasses of rice for sushi;
4 pickled plums;
a piece of grilled salmon (you can use any other red fish, tuna and even canned fish, the main thing is not to get carried away with raw seafood);
a tablespoon of salt; - nori seaweed;
sesame.

If you can't find pickled plums, use any other filling: cucumber, shrimp, canned corn.

How to cook rice for Japanese balls

First, prepare the rice, from which you will later create balls. First, soak the rice in cold water for 15–20 minutes, then rinse it thoroughly, add water in a ratio of one to two and put on fire. Rice should be cooked over low heat until cooked (as a rule, it takes 10-15 minutes after the water boils). Remove the pot from the stove and let the rice cool. To prepare onigiri, it must be hot, but not burn your hands.

If desired, you can add your own spices to the rice to give the dish a spicier taste.

How to make onigiri

Pour a tablespoon of salt into a shallow cup, bowl, or just on a separate plate. Separate one eighth of the rice and transfer it to another container. Poke a hole in the center of this pile of rice, put a plum (or other stuffing that you decide to use instead of umeboshi) there, and then cover it with rice on top. Moisten your hands with water, take a small amount of salt and rub it in your palms. Take out the rice with the plum and shape it into a ball. It should be quite dense and hold its shape well. Make four onigiri with pickled plums. Take a sheet of nori, cut it into four strips and wrap them around the balls.

Are you familiar with onigiri - Japanese rice balls? We promise: onigiri is sure to become the highlight of your menu - whether during lunch with colleagues, or as a healthy snack at a break for your children, or a convenient food for your next trip. We will tell you how rice balls are prepared in the homeland of this dish - in Japan.

What is the difference between onigiri and sushi

You need to know that onigiri is not a type of sushi - it is a separate dish, a method of eating and storing rice. Japanese peasants have long made balls of plain rice and took a bite to eat with them in the field. And sushi appeared as a form of storage of seafood and, in particular, fish, so rice with vinegar, sugar and salt is used for their preparation.

How onigiri is prepared

The word "onigiri" comes from the verb "nigiru" and in Japanese means to squeeze, which reflects the way the dish is prepared. Onigiri is made from boiled glutinous warm rice. Squeezing rice in the palm of your hand, form balls, triangles or squares.

Products are stuffed with vegetables or meat, and in Japan, in addition, they like to decorate them with cute faces from nori sheets. We'll show you where to start if you decide to try Japanese rice balls.

How to make onigiri: mix rice with fish and herbs, then form rice balls

Asian fast food made from rice not only looks funny at times, but is mainly a useful and practical satiating food for satisfying hunger in between times. For those who don't like raw fish and rice vinegar in their sushi, pure rice onigiri is a great tasty alternative. In Japan, you can buy onigiri in a wide variety of flavors everywhere, and they are always present in lunch boxes, or food containers that you take on the road.

Rice for onigiri

For onigiri to keep its shape, it is best to cook them with sushi rice or other round grain rice that sticks together well. Before cooking rice, it must be thoroughly washed. In a warm state, boiled rice lends itself best to molding. However, it is worth letting the boiled rice cool down a little so as not to burn your hands.

Rice is traditionally used in its pure form, but if desired, you can use the same seasonings as for sushi, such as rice vinegar, or add a mixture of Japanese spices. The mixes are called Furikake and they come in a variety of flavors such as fish, kelp, sesame seeds or soy.

Onigiri Seasonings - Japanese and International Flavors

Although it is enough to dip onigiri in soy sauce and the combination tastes great, small rice balls can also be stuffed at will. Typical Japanese filling: fresh or dried fish. So, you can, for example, take strips of smoked salmon or tuna pate.

Fruits or vegetables such as crispy fresh bell peppers, diced avocados, chopped broccoli, or cucumbers cut into strips are very tasty additions. To stuff onigiri, it is enough to make a small depression in each serving of rice, place the stuffing there, and cover it with rice.

How to shape onigiri: rice balls, squares, triangles

Now let's move on to sculpting onigiri. This procedure must be performed with moistened hands - but do not use too much water: highly moistened rice will quickly lose its stickiness. It is also important not to pinch the products - otherwise the rice will begin to fall apart, it will turn out dry and tasteless.

Onigiri comes in three basic shapes: balls, triangles, and squares.

✔ Rice balls are the easiest to form and stuff.

✔ Square onigiri, in turn, will help save space, fitting perfectly into a cramped lunch box.

✔ Forming triangles requires the most skill, but it is from them that funny figures are most often obtained.

Decorating onigiri with nori sheets and other products

Ready-made onigiri can also be decorated. Nori sheets are best suited for this - thin sheets of seaweed can be cut with scissors, like paper.

Onigiri wrapped in nori

To begin with, it is worth, for example, decorating onigiri with thin strips, and having gained a little skill, you can wrap them completely. In addition, nori sheets provide another benefit: those who eat onigiri can avoid touching the glutinous rice with their hands, and fingers remain clean when handling nori-wrapped onigiri with their hands. By the way, nori sheets are perfect for fun decor - with some creativity and imagination, using nori pieces you can make soccer balls, pirates, cute faces or even Pokemon out of onigiri.

Like classic sushi, onigiri can be garnished with other ingredients that add spice at the same time, for example, onigiri is often rolled in black or white sesame seeds. In Japan, onigiri mixed with fried scrambled egg flakes is a popular option. It is also a good idea to roll unseasoned onigiri in the spice mixture. By the way, onigiri can also be fried in a pan or even on the grill - then the outer layer will be crispy.

onigiri recipe

Onigiri Ingredients

round rice, 210 g (glass)
filling
dried nori seaweed, 6 strips 1 cm wide
sesame seeds for sprinkling

How to cook

1. Pour the washed rice in a saucepan with two glasses of water, let it boil, then reduce the heat to a minimum and cook for 15-20 minutes until all the water has evaporated. After that, leave the rice to cool to room temperature or just lukewarm.

2. Prepare a solution of water and salt. Divide the rice into balls with your hands soaked in salt water.

3. Lightly squeezing the bun in the palm of your hand, make a recess into which add the filling, about a teaspoon without a slide. It is important not to pinch the onigiri during cooking, otherwise it may fall apart.

4. Cover the indentation with rice.

5. Form onigiri of the desired shape from the resulting koloboks - triangles, squares, ovals or balls. Wrap onigiri in nori strips, sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Fillings for onigiri

For the filling, almost any seafood that you prefer is suitable. Among them are salted fish, red or black caviar, shrimp, etc. Even with sausages and fried minced meat, you can cook rice balls. There are also special molds for onigiri, in which it is a pleasure to cook.

Arancini (translated from Italian as "little oranges") is a traditional Sicilian dish, which is stuffed rice balls, breaded and fried in a large amount of oil. During the cooking process, a small amount of turmeric or saffron is added to the rice grains, due to which the cereal turns yellow or orange, and the finished products become similar to citrus fruits. Hence the name of the recipe.

Prepare such balls with different fillers. In our example, arancini will be stuffed with minced meat stewed in tomato paste and a cheese slice. Rice under a rich fried crust, combined with meat and melted viscous cheese - it's very tasty!

Ingredients:

rice - 300 g (the weight of unboiled cereals is indicated);
egg - 1 pc.;
cheese - 50 g;
turmeric - 1⁄2 tsp;
salt - to taste.

For filling:

minced beef - 250 g;
cheese - 100 g;
tomato paste - 2 tbsp. spoons;
salt, pepper - to taste;
vegetable oil (for frying) - 2-3 tbsp. spoons.

For breading and frying:

eggs - 2 pcs.;
breadcrumbs - 1⁄2 cups;
vegetable oil - about 500 ml.

Rice balls arancini recipe with photo

Put the washed rice in a saucepan, pour in about 700-800 ml of water. Salt, add turmeric. Cook the cereal until cooked (until soft). If all the liquid in the pan evaporates, and the grains still remain undercooked, add a little water. But it is important not to overdo it with the liquid - in this recipe, the rice should turn out to be sticky, not crumbly.
We rub cheese (50 g) with small chips and load it with rice cooled to a warm state. We drive in the egg and carefully knead the rice "porridge".
How to make arancini stuffing
Put the minced meat in a frying pan with heated oil. Fry, breaking up large meat lumps with a spatula.
When all minced meat changes color from red-pink to gray-beige, add tomato paste. Season the meat with salt/pepper.
Stir the contents of the pan, pour in a couple of tablespoons of water and simmer the meat filling for arancini for 5-10 minutes (until fully cooked).
Cut the cheese for the filling into fairly large cubes.
How to form arancini with cheese and minced meat
Wet hands thoroughly with water. We pinch off a large lump from the rice mass and flatten it in the palm of our hand. In the center we place about a spoonful of minced meat and a cheese cube.
We hide the filling - we fold the rice ball.
Whisk the eggs with a fork, combining the yolks and whites into a single composition. Dip the rice ball into the egg mixture.
Next, generously roll the workpiece in breadcrumbs. In a similar way, we form the rest of the arancini with the filling, not forgetting to moisten the palms with water each time. In total, you will get 11-12 large balls or a little more (depending on the desired size).
Arancini are cooked in plenty of oil. You can use a deep fryer or just take a thick-bottomed frying pan with high sides. Heat up the oil and fry the arancini in batches. Balls must be at least half immersed in oil.
Turn the arancini from time to time so that they cook evenly. When the rice balls are browned on all sides, we catch them with a slotted spoon and immediately place them on napkins or paper towels to absorb excess fat.
Serve arancini rice balls hot or warm.