Onigiri (Japanese Rice Ball)

by **Uchi_Reina** Mon Apr 08, 2013 8:50 am

ONIGIRI

Onigiri (Japanese Rice Ball) Famous_food_onigiri_image_2

O-nigiri (お握り or 御握り; おにぎり), also known as o-musubi (お結び; おむすび), nigirimeshi (握り飯; にぎりめし) or rice ball, is a Japanese food made from white rice formed into triangular or oval shapes and often wrapped in nori (seaweed). Traditionally, an onigiri is filled with pickled ume (umeboshi), salted salmon, katsuobushi, kombu, tarako, or any other salty or sour ingredient as a natural preservative. Because of the popularity of onigiri in Japan, most convenience stores stock their onigiri with various fillings and flavors. There are even specialized shops which only sell onigiri to Take-out.

HISTORY

In Lady Murasaki's 11th-century diary Murasaki Shikibu Nikki, she writes of people eating rice balls. At that time, onigiri were called tonjiki and often consumed at outdoor picnic lunches. Other writings, dating back as far as the seventeenth century, state that many samurai stored rice balls wrapped in bamboo sheath as a quick lunchtime meal during war, but the origins of onigiri are much earlier even than Lady Murasaki. Before the use of chopsticks became widespread, in the Nara period, rice was often rolled into a small ball so that it could be easily picked up. In the Heian period, rice was also made into small rectangular shapes known as tonjiki so that they could be piled onto a plate and easily eaten.
From the Kamakura period to the early Edo period, onigiri was used as a quick meal. This made sense as cooks simply had to think about making enough onigiri and did not have to concern themselves with serving. These onigiri were simply balls of rice flavored with salt. Nori did not become widely available until the Genroku era in the mid-Edo period, when the farming of nori and fashioning it into sheets became widespread.
It was believed that onigiri could not be mass-produced as the hand-rolling technique was considered too difficult for a machine to replicate.[who?] In the 1980s, however, a machine that made triangular onigiri was devised. This was initially met with skepticism because, rather than having the filling traditionally rolled inside, the flavoring was simply put into a hole in the onigiri, and the hole was hidden by nori. Since the onigiri made by this machine came with nori already applied to the rice ball, over time the nori became unpleasantly moist and sticky, clinging to the rice. A packaging improvement allowed the nori to be stored separately from the rice. Before eating, the diner could open the packet of nori and wrap the onigiri. The limitation of the machines that required using a hole for filling the onigiri instead of rolling the filling with the rice actually made new flavors of onigiri easier to produce as this cooking process did not require changes from ingredient to ingredient. Modern mechanically wrapped onigiri are specially folded so that the plastic wrapping is actually folded between the nori and rice to act as a moisture barrier. When the packaging is pulled open at both ends, the nori and rice come into contact.

SHAPES

There are different shapes of onigiri. Common shapes include:

1. Triangle: A low triangular prism.

2. Tawara:[disambiguation needed] A round pillar shape.

3. Round: Similar to the shape of Gouda cheese and Kagami mochi.
Ball

4. Square: A low Rectangular parallelepiped shape.

FILLINGS

Typical fillings are listed below.

1. No filling: only salt.

2. Dressed dishes: tuna with mayonnaise, shrimp with mayonnaise etc.
dried-fishes : roasted and crumbled mackerel(鯖), horse mackerel(鰺), etc.

3. Fried foods: Small sized tempura, cutlet.

4. Kakuni: dongpo pork.

5. Dried foods: okaka, etc.

6. Processed roe: mentaiko, caviar, etc.

7. Shiokara: squid, shuto, etc.

8. Tsukudani: nori, Ammodytes personatus(小女子), Venerupis philippinarum(浅蜊), etc.

9. Pickles: umeboshi, takana, etc.

10. Miso: Sometimes mixed with green onion, or roasted.

HOW TO MAKE ONIGIRI

by mr.kudos Mon Apr 08, 2013 10:19 am

The most simplest japanese food existed..and the very best

Onigiri (Japanese Rice Ball)

Onigiri (Japanese Rice Ball)

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