Onigiri Lunch Box

This lunch box is super easy to make since most of us have some leftover rice in the refrigerator or from the night before.  I stock up on pouch tuna when it goes on sales and that comes in handy.  If you have these two main ingredients, you can make onigiri!  Onigiri is Japanese rice balls and you can eat it with a piece of roasted seaweed too.  Korean have their own version and it is called samgak kimbap (triangle rice balls) and it is wrapped in seaweed (will do a post on this later).  Both of these make easy lunch box or picnic food and kids love them.

Ingredients:

Leftover rice, heat it up and season with pure sesame oil and furikake (Japanese use this to season rice).  You can add a little sea salt if you like.  If you don't have furikake, just cut a piece of roasted seaweed into tiny pieces and mixed with roasted white sesame seeds.

1 tuna pouch, season with 1 Tbsp. mayo, 1 Tbsp. sweet relish, dashes of paprika, 1 tsp. dried celery, 1/4 tsp. rock salt.  Mix well to blend. (Note:  You can also use pork/chicken floss as filling)

Onigiri molds (you can find it at the Asian supermarket, or Korean/Japanese markets).  My readers sent me those few years ago, how very nice of them. :-)

Method:

Add some seasoned rice into the mold, add a layer of seasoned tuna and cover the top with more rice.  Use the onigiri mold cover to press down the rice.  Turn it over and press out the rice balls (there will be a thing at the back to assist you).  Decorate the top with black sesame seeds.

If you don't have the mold, you can do it the traditional way, press it by using both of your hands, but oil it with some sesame oil first before you start shaping.  Traditional shape by hands would be round or triangular.