🍙 Take homemade onigiri (rice balls) on your next hike!

I guided a walk last weekend to my favorite place: the Lafayette Reservoir. You can find me there often, as it’s just a 20 minute walk from my door. One of the participants told me she was jealous of my lunch, just a few onigiri I quickly put together that morning, so I decided to take her up on her request to show how easy it is by posting this video. My husband taught me how to make these, but any mistakes in protocol are purely mine 😆

Some additional instructions:

🍚 Have your rice cooker cook your rice. I like both white rice (hakumai) and brown rice (genmai), it just depends on what we have in the cooker on that day!

😋 Prepare the fillings: I made a quick salmon-mayo filling (canned salmon, black pepper, diced green onion, mayonnaise), and I always have a smashed umeboshi-honey filling (pickled plums are very sour so I add honey to sweeten things up!) in the fridge. You can basically use any filling you like!

👌 Use clingfilm (saran wrap) to form the onigiri so your hands stay clean! It’s really easy, layer cooked rice and filling and cooked rice, close the wrap and use your hands to make the shape you like. I usually do triangles but balls are fine too. My onigiri tend to be the size of my hand, but any size is fine!

🍘 I like my nori (seaweed) wrap to be really fresh so I take a one-person package and wrap my onigiri in them at the last possible moment. Any nori will do, I like both Japanese and Korean style.

Onigiri are best consumed really fresh, if you can don't put them in the fridge as the rice will become hard.