Gyokuro Onigiri
The desire to make onigiri was a little random. I was looking through my shelves and saw that I had a little bit of sushi rice left. What could I make with this? I started looking things up and came across onigiri, which I‘ve always wanted to make!
Since quarantine, i’ve been cooking and baking things I usually don’t have time for but I honestly haven’t had the will to photograph and write a blog post. I’ve missed sharing on here so I decided to start back up with something easy!
While onigiri isn’t sushi, it does require short grained rice so I decided to use what I had left. I also chose to purchase umeboshi which are japanese pickled plums and bonito flakes. These are items you can probably find easily but if you want to order them online you can find them on amazon. I’ve put two links below, please note that these are affiliate links and if you purchase through them I will receive a small commission.
The way I incorporated tea into this recipe is my favorite way, through the rice! Instead of using water to cook the rice, I brewed gyokuro and cooked the rice in the gyokuro! This is a subtle flavor but it’s there for sure!
I also soaked the bonito flakes in gyokruo as well!
Here’s what I did:
-Prep your ingredients: Brew your gyokuro, check the instructions on your rice and however much water your rice calls for, use that much gyokuro. Mine was 1 1/2 cups rice to 2 cups gyokuro. Use leftover gyokuro to soak some bonito flakes and add soy sauce as well. Take the seeds out of the umeboshi. If you squeeze them, the seeds come out pretty easily. Mix the umeboshi so that the piums break up and eventually form into a paste.
-Cook the rice. Do this based on the directions on your rice. Before assembling, let your rice cool down but I found it easier to create these balls when the rice was still warm. Totally optional but I covered the rice in eden shake for some extra flavor!
-When making these, either use plastic wrap or a cloth or wet your hands to stop the rice sticking to your hands.
-What I did was get a large bunch of rice, flatten it in my hand, place in the ingredients then start covering it with rice and forming balls
-Finally, wrap your rice ball in nori!
- I think these taste best warm but if you do refrigerate, make sure to seal it well so it doesn’t get too cold.
Oh my gosh yall, these were so good! The umeboshi is my favorite. I love how salty and tart they are.
I wanted to share this video for your reference in watching her make the rice balls a lot prettier than I did and she also shares a few other ingredients you can use in your onigiri!