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(Sakura gasps) (birds chirping)
(speaking Japanese)
- [Alvin] Hello there, welcome back
to another episode of Anime with Alvin.
Today, I will be making the giant onigiri
from Cooking with Valkyries.
This is a large sheet of nori.
We will be needing a lot of this.
Onigiri is a kind of rice ball.
So, we're gonna need to cook some rice.
I'm wanna make a typical pot of rice
that I use to make for dinner at home.
I like to use about three cups of short-grain rice.
And filling it up with enough water
so that when you stick a finger in,
it'll reach the first knuckle.
And then, just pressing the Cook button.
Pretty straightforward.
And once the rice cooker sings its I'm ready song,
I get to enjoy a little steam bath
before transferring the rice into a tray to cool for a bit.
Thank you, rice cooker, for your hard work today.
I'm gonna get started on the salmon,
which is going to be one of three fillings.
I'm gonna take these three beautiful salmon filets
and rub them with a little bit of sake.
This will allow the salmon filets
to freshen up a little bit.
Like a quick rinse in the shower before you hit the club.
I'd still recommend a full shower though.
After that, we're covering them
with a generous amount of salt.
Essentially salt, curing these filets.
It is a lot of salt,
but that just means this is gonna taste good.
Now it's time for those three filets
to take a nice long nap inside the fridge.
You'll notice that the salt
has pulled out quite a bit of water.
And to my pleasant surprise,
the salmon is still soft but firm and bouncy to the touch.
After putting the filets on a foil-lined tray,
I'm throwing them in the oven at 450° for about 15 minutes.
The salmon filets emerge beautifully from the oven.
And now, I'm gonna take the meat off the skin.
One separation has been complete.
It is important to not waste the fish skin.
You can microwave these or bake these
for a quick little snack.
As for the salmon meat,
I'm simply just mixing it up with the fork
until the chunks are nice and small but not mashed up.
Filling number one is ready to go.
I now return from frame right
with a large bowl of drained canned tuna.
To make our second filling,
I'm simply mixing with a large amount of Kewpie mayo.
Canned tuna acts like a sponge.
It absorbs whatever you give,
and usually a lot more than what you think.
With our second filling done,
I now, again, exit frame right.
From where I return with umeboshi,
a Japanese salted and pickled plum.
According to some Googling,
this is also a common filling used in onigiri.
And also the same filling the Valkyries used in the anime.
To prepare the umeboshi, I'm cutting out the pits
and simply chopping this up into little chunks.
Our third filling is done,
but I think it would be quite wise
to do a practice run on a normal-sized onigiri first.
This is my setup:
I got a bowl cold water.
Umeboshi.
My tray of cooled rice.
And some salt.
I've learned that a pretty common way to make this
is first starting by rubbing water on your hands.
Then, picking up a little bit of salt
and essentially seasoning your hands.
This is so that as you're handling the rice,
it'll season the rice.
After making a little well of rice,
put in a couple pieces of the umeboshi,
coaxing it into the center.
And with a little bit of rice on top,
using my hands to form this into a rounded triangle shape.
The water also helps prevent the rice
from sticking to your hands.
I've managed to get it in a pretty okay shape.
So the final touches are:
Place a little strip of nori around the bottom
and a little bit of the umeboshi on top,
just so people know what flavor it is.
I think I made mine a little too fat though,
so I'm gonna try again.
Salted water on the hands.
Grabbing some rice.
Umeboshi in the middle.
And nori around the bottom.
I'm a lot happier with this one.
It is now time for quality control.
Salty, sour.
Pretty good.
And with my test run onigiri off to a pretty good start,
I think it's time to go for the big one.
Our rice cooker has worked quite hard today,
so we're gonna let it rest
while cooking rice on the stovetop.
Two large pots with about three cups of rice each.
Enough water to fill it up to the first knuckle.
And cooking it until it's done.
It's always surprising to me
just how much rice just swells up.
It's like the opposite of cooking spinach.
These two pots of cooked rice,
along with the remainder of the old cooked rice,
is now going into a huge bowl.
Just to cool down a little bit.
This is where things get quite fun.
I have your two bowls lined with Saran wrap,
in which I'm going to evenly separate the rice into.
Once a nice 50-50 has been achieved,
I'm now pounding a little crater in the middle of each bowl.
This will be the hole that the toppings get inserted into.
In one bowl, I'm putting in the salmon.
And in the other bowl, I'm putting in the tuna filling.
Now, onigiri has many, many, many ways
of preparations and fillings,
but I decided to go with tuna mayo and salmon
because they seem to be the most popular.
Once both fillings have been nestled
tightly and evenly in their rice cocoons,
I am now praying to the onigiri God
as I transfer one half on top of the other.
Ah, okay, here we go, come on.
Let's, yep.
Uh-hmm.
Thank you, gravity.
And thank you, Saran wrap.
We now begin the plastering stage.
Pressing giant sheets of nori onto the warm rice.
The moisture and warm from the rice
will allow the nori to stick and soften.
Kind of like free glue.
My goal here is to achieve a 100% nori coverage rate
on this giant rice ball.
Flipping it back into another bowl
and exposing the other naked bottom.
But which side is truly the bottom?
Food for thought.
As I begin to continue a cycle
of flipping, covering, flipping, and covering,
what you see here is an ancient cooking technique
used by millions of home cooks throughout history
and around the world, known as...
Not sure, but really hope it works.
But to my pleasant surprise,
this is working very well.
Everything is smooth.
Everything is round.
Everything is shiny.
And everything feels right.
I present to you our version of the giant onigiri
from Cooking With Valkyries.
A large, dark, shiny object
that is reminiscent of a whale egg.
Do whales lay eggs?
And to my pleasure, once again,
this feels firm but soft and bouncy at the same time.
Quite fun to play with, I might add.
I wonder how basketball would work.
It is now time for quality control once again.
Just like in the anime,
I wanna take a little bite.
Mm.
Yeah, that's...
That is seaweed and rice, ladies and gentlemen.
I think for a proper test,
this must have a cross section.
As the knife slices through,
I will say that feeling and watching
the rice ball split open smoothly
is giving me a joy that I didn't know I wanted.
Now, that's what I'm talking about.
Miraculously, everything is holding together quite nicely.
You can see both fillings, the tuna and the salmon,
harmonizing like yin and yang.
The ratio of rice to filling
is quite pleasing to my economic side.
But how does this really taste?
After making myself a little handful,
I will conclude that this tastes pretty good.
The salty salmon goes well with the neutral flavored rice,
but I see why the creamy tuna mayo filling
is the most popular.
But I have to say, the team today at the studio
definitely seems to be enjoying the giant onigiri.
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