Hi I'm Steve Owens and you're in Steve's kitchen and today we're making onigiri a
wonderful little Japanese snack. Now if you went to school or work in Japan you
might open your lunch box and find these wonderful little rice snacks, of course
in the West we often have sandwiches but there's a reason why they have a high
life expectancy in Japan and that's because not only are these delicious,
they're very healthy. So I'm going to show you how to make them. First of all
you're going to need to make the Japanese style sushi rice, now I did that
video the other day and if you haven't seen that get across and follow this
link here. Now if you've watched that let's get ready and make the onigiri.
Now the different fillings you can put in onigiri are endless really and I've
got my rice here I've just covered it with a damp cloth just to stop it from
drying out. Here I've got some bonito flakes, that's like a little flaked fish,
I've got a pickled salted plum here, they're wonderful flavor to go into an
onigiri. I'm also going to be using some dark black sesame seeds just for that
nutty flavor, you could use regular tuna, western style tuna, I've got some
mackerel here that I'm going to use as well. Let's get on and just prepare these
ingredients. If you can get hold of these little salted plums they are great,
they're very sort of tart in flavor but we just need to get the seed out of the
center and you're left then with just the pulp of the plum itself. You can get
these little packs of bonito flakes, it's like a shredded fish and we're just
going to rehydrate with a little bit of light soy sauce, not too much and just
mix that through, if you put too much in there it'll get too salty. Now that's
looking absolutely perfect and they are absolutely delicious inside the onigiri.
I don't need to do anything with the black sesame, that's just going to add a
nutty flavor if I want to use them and then as I said before you could use tuna
but I've got these little mackerel fish here, I'm just going to pop half of that in
a bowl, it's very similar to tuna I really love the taste of this mackerel.
Now I'm going to put some japanese-style mayonnaise in there, probably about a
tablespoon and then we're just going to mix that through, get a wonderful fish
and mayonnaise paste. Now they're the fillings I'm going to use but really
your imagination is your only limitation when making this sort of food. Now my
sushi rice is at room temperature I've covered it with that damp cloth just to
keep the moisture in, now one of the tips with working with sushi rice is it is
one of the most sticky Rice's you'll ever come across and if you try to
handle it without using damp hands this is going to happen and that is one of
the reasons we've got a little bowl of water here and I'm just going to add a
little bit of salt in that to season the water, then effectively what we need to
do is have good clean hands, a lot of Japanese cooking is done with your hands.
We're going to coat our hands in that salty water, we are then going to
take a big piece of this rice and I'm just going to flatten it in my... see
how it's not not sticking. Now I'm going to create a ball of rice in my hand a
little bit spherical maybe a bit flat, then I'm going to push a hole into the
center, then I'm going to take a handful, a little pinch of my fish and mayonnaise
mixture just push it into the middle there, we just want to push it down into
the center. You can also take another little piece of rice if you like and
just pop it on top what I'm doing here now is taking that rice ball and I want
to get the onigiri shape. So I'm pinching at the top with these two fingers to
make a little pyramid top and cupping the rice with the other to keep the
sides straight and we have a little piece of nori seaweed to hold the
onigiri with and it looks kind of cute. So let me just try another one, I've got a
nice big lump of rice there, I popped that into my hand shape it up into a
ball, then we're going to make a hole in the middle of the rice and this time I'm
going to take those little bonito flakes, I'm just going to stick those in the middle
of my rice ball, then I'm just going to take a little bit of that black sesame
and drop it in there as well just because I like it and again here I'm
taking that rice and I'm squeezing it, cupping my hand and using my fingers to
get that little triangle shape and you end up there with a little pyramid
shaped onigiri and then we take a little piece of nori again and put it around
the bottom, so that you can hold on to your onigiri and there are my onigiri
ready to eat. Now this one here I've dipped in the little black
Sesame's because I love the toasted flavor of that. Now you could also
decorate the tops with other little bits of fish or fish roe but there is no hard
or fast way of what you put inside your onigiri, it's really up to you. I heard
somebody actually put chocolate in there, I don't know if I fancy that but it
could be fun. So let me give this a try right now, that is delicious, it's got the
bonito inside, lovely fishy flavor, salty flavor. Now if you give these a try I'd
love to have a comment down below on how they went for you, please share the love,
give this one a thumbs up, I'll see you in the next video
and keep your eyes peeled because I will be doing sushi rolls very shortly and
they are very simple to make and heaps of fun. So stay tuned, I'll leave a link
or two to some other videos here, subscribe to the channel, see you next
time