Japanese Rice Sandwich – Onigirazu
Published on
October 13, 2020
in
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Mains
A recipe for Onigirazu, a modern take on the well known Japanese dish, Onigiri.
Onigirazu has been around for about the last 6 years in Japan.
After following this recipe you will be left with 4 rice sandwich varieties.
They are salmon, cream cheese, avocado and chive, dashi omelette with carrot and cucumber, miso pork mince with cheese and spinach and lastly tuna with spicy mayonnaise and corn.
For the dashi omelette Onigirazu, the dashi omelette must first be made ready and for the miso pork mince Onigirazu, the miso pork mince must also be made ready. The preperation for the tuna Onigirazu is simply mixing the ingredients together.
The only preperation needed for the salmon Onigirazu is slicing the avocado and cutting the salmon into pieces.
Onigiri in Japanese implies to make a rice ball and Onigirazu takes this a step further, implying to make a rice sandwich.
Shaping the Onigiri in to rice ball triangles can involve getting your hands wet and salty, especially if shaping with out cling wrap and when eating them can get your hands a bit dirty. This might be a contributing factor to Onigirazu becoming so popular, as it’s less messy.
Another factor for it’s popularity could be that after making Onigirazu, the stuffing is not hidden in the centre of the rice, like in Onigiri.
Start by cooking Japanese short grain rice, then add rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt, to make the sushi rice. Apart from giving the rice a sticky and moist texture, the rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt also adds a slightly sour taste to the rice.
Regular short or medium grain rice can be used as a substitute for Japanese short grain rice, but long grain rice doesn’t have enough starch to hold together properly and also sticky rice is too sticky, so avoid using them in this recipe.
When preparing the rice, it should be cooked with a little less water than usually required, so that when adding the vinegar, salt and sugar it doesn’t become too moist.
Using warm rice aids in making the nori bundles easier to cut in half. Using a knife that’s wet also helps to cut the bundles and when cutting the bundles, going against the grain is better.
It’s easy to forget which way the 4 bundles need to be cut to cut against the grain, but in this recipe it’s only important to remember to cut 1 of them against the grain.
The dashi omelette Onigirazu with thin strips of cucumber and carrot should be cut against the grain, so that the cucumber and carrot are cut in half in length.
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Description
A recipe for Japanese Rice Sandwich – Onigirazu
- 4 large nori seaweed sheets
For sushi rice:
- 1 cup Japanese short grain rice
- 3 tbsp rice wine vinegar
- 1.5 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp salt
For salmon Onigirazu:
- 20g salmon
- 2 tbsp cream cheese
- 1/2 avocado
- 5g chives
For Dashi omelette Onigirazu:
- 2 eggs
- 3 tsp dashi powder
- 3 tsp sake
- 1.5 tsp tsp soy sauce
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1/3 medium sized carrot
- 1/4 continental cucumber
For Miso pork Onigirazu:
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 125g pork mince
- 20g garlic or 1 clove, chopped finely
- 20g ginger piece, chopped finely
- 3 tbsp miso paste
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 2 tbsp sake
- 1 tsp soy sauce
- 2 tsp chilli bean sauce (we used Toban Djan)
- 1/4 cup shredded tasty cheese
- 1/4 cup small spinach
For spicy tuna mayonnaise Onigirazu:
- tuna 90g
- 1.5 tbsp mayonnaise
- 3 tsp chilli sauce (we used Sriracha)
- 25g canned corn
- To prepare sushi rice: Rinse 1 cup of rice in a saucepan until the rice runs clean, then drain water and add 1 and 1/5 cups of water to the saucepan and cook on a high heat on a stove, until boiling, then lower the heat to a very low heat and cook for 15 minutes with the lid on. When cooked, put the rice in a large bowl and add rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt and mix well, then put aside.
- To prepare salmon Onigirazu: Cut the salmon into pieces and the avocado into slices.
- To prepare dashi omelette Onigirazu: First make the dashi omelette. In a medium bowl whisk the 2 eggs, dashi powder, sake, soy sauce, sugar and 2 tbsp water. Heat extra virgin olive oil in a frypan on a medium heat, then add the egg mixture and continue to fold with a ladle until it has a soft consistency and with less liquid to make the omelette, then put aside.
- To prepare miso pork Onigirazu: Make the miso pork mince by heating extra virgin olive oil in a frypan over a medium heat. Add pork mince and cook for 5 minutes or until slightly brown, then add garlic and ginger and cook for a further 5 minutes. Turn heat down to low and add 100ml water, miso paste, sugar, sake, soy sauce, chilli bean sauce, stir and cook for 10 minutes or until it starts to thicken. Turn heat off and put aside.
- To prepare spicy tuna mayonnaise Onigirazu: Add tuna, mayonnaise, chilli sauce and canned corn to a medium sized bowl and mix.
- Cut cling wrap a little bit larger than the large square nori seaweed and put it down on a cutting board and then put the nori in a diamond shape, glossy side down in the centre of the cling wrap.
- For the salmon Onigirazu, in the small plastic container or Onigirazu mold, make layers of rice, salmon, cream cheese, avocado, chives, then rice once again. Position the container and flip it over on to the center of the nori, then lift the container up. Fold the left and right sides of the nori so that they meet on the front, then fold the top and bottom, completely covering the rice mixture in nori seaweed.
- Fold the top and bottom of the cling wrap together, so that they meet on top of the Onigirazu, then the sides to seal the bundle in cling wrap.
- Repeat the last 3 steps for dashi omelette Onigirazu by lining omelette, carrot and cucumber inbetween rice, for the miso pork Onigirazu, by lining pork mince, cheese and spinach inbetween the rice and finally for spicy tuna mayonnaise Onigirazu by lining tuna mixture inbetween the rice. Cut the 4 bundles in half, then serve.
Notes
Cling wrap is also needed for this recipe and we used a 10.5cm square plastic container to shape the sushi. An Onigirazu mold can be bought from online stores, such as Amazon instead.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 2
- Calories: 1127