From the inside to the left: Braised tuna pieces, fried pickled mustard greens, fried minced beef and minced pork, mayonnaise mixed with oily tuna and dried bonito cheese. Cheese will melt into a sticky paste when it is wrapped in hot rice.

knead the cooked rice into a triangular or elliptical shape by hand, and it is a rice ball, which is called ONIGIRI in Japanese, also known as OMUSUBI. As long as some salt is added to the rice ball, it will be very tasty. Because it is simple and easy to carry, Japanese people will never forget to bring rice balls when they go out to enjoy flowers, have an outing or participate in sports meetings. It can be said that rice balls have become a traditional Japanese food carrier.

A description of rice balls appeared in the novel Tale of Genji written by Murasaki shikibu 1 years ago. At that time, at the court ceremony, people piled up food made of rice on plates and offered it to the gods. The 15th and 16th centuries were a time of war in Japan. It is said that the food that soldiers in the army took when they marched was rice balls wrapped in bean paste (Gao protein) and baked.

there are many kinds of rice balls. Using different ingredients or different combinations of ingredients can make rice balls with different flavors. The use of combined ingredients can also balance the intake of needed nutrients, and at the same time, different ingredients can also bring beauty to people in color embellishment.

In Japan today, rice balls are mostly wrapped with laver. However, because the price of laver used to be high, laver rice balls don't seem to have a long history. At the same time, in recent years, people often use wooden or plastic molds to make rice balls. However, for the Japanese, rice balls made with the palm of your hand and with affection or affection have a special taste. In Japanese, ONIGIRI and OMUSUBI both mean "pinch with both hands". For the Japanese, the rice balls cooked by my mother in childhood are an unforgettable "motherly taste".

The key to cooking rice balls is to wet your hands with water first, so that the rice won't stick to your hands, and the rice balls must be pinched while they are hot. If it is cooled rice, the grains will not stick to each other and it is difficult to form a ball. At the same time, the salt sprinkled on the surface of the rice ball will be evenly dissolved into the rice ball due to the heat and humidity of the rice. You can also wet your hands with concentrated salt water (adding 3 times of water to the salt) and then knead the rice balls. However, many families now pinch rice balls with plastic wrap because rice is hot or they don't want to get their hands on it.