These Easy Onigiri Rice Balls Are Great Fun To Make With Kids
Cooking With Kids is a weekly recipe series on getting creative in the kitchen with the family.
Bored of the same sandwich lunch option? Enter: Onigiri rice balls, found everywhere in Japan. Your kids will love them.
Head chef and co-founder of udon noodle restaurant Koya in London, Shuko Oda loves making tje handmade rice balls with a wide range of fillings and variations with her two small children.
“Onigiri is special as the whole point of a rice ball is that each one’s different –because every hand that forms them is different,” she tells HuffPost UK. “Obviously, you get small awkward shapes with kids, but they look sweet on your plate and are good as they’re filled with warmth, love, and oddness!”
Besides forming them, little ones can get involved at any point in the process and learn a variety of skills. From cooking on the hob (with parental supervision, of course), and patience waiting for the rice to be cooked, this is a forgiving recipe that doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look perfect.
“That’s the fun bit of cooking with the small ones, as you don’t need to feel so precious about the end result,” Oda explains. “My older daughter loves the shaping process, she just wants to try different shapes and my son likes using this shaking onigiri making instrument that my mother sent me from Japan – pop rice in, close the lid and shake like a maracas.”
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Onigiri Rice Balls
Serves: 2 (makes 4-6 onigiri rice balls) | Prep time: 1 hr | Cook time: 40 mins
Ingredients:
300g short-grain Japanese rice
1-1.5 big sheets (approx. 20cm square) nori sheets
Filling of your choice.
FYI: Pretty much anything can go in as filling, such as frankfurter, edamame beans, ham, umeboshi (salted Japanese plum), sweetcorn, salmon, and sesame seeds. For this recipe, Oda has chosen a tuna mayo filling, and...
