onigiri...the simple way

Ingredients to make simple onigiri:

rice
salt
1 plate or tray
1 bowl
spoon
chopsticks
saran wrap
filling: salmon, umeboshi (pickled plum,) furikake (rice seasoning)
nori (seaweed)

Take a piece of saran wrap and put it in the bowl.

Put some rice in the bowl. The amount is up to how much you want in a single rice ball.

Make a 'hole' in the middle of rice and put whatever filling you want it in. The one below is umeboshi. The amount of filling is also up to you.

You can also have salmon.

After you placed the filling into the 'hole', pull up the saran wrap so it covers the rice and you can lift it up from bowl. Now you can handle the rice ball without touching the rice with your barehands. *Caution: contents are hot*

Mold the rice by turning it in your hands, pressing down. Make a cupping motion like the pic below to form the triangular shape.

When you're pressing down with one hand, the hand on the thumb on the bottom hand should gently push the filling to the middle of the rice ball.

Take your time and when you're done, you should have a nice triangular ball of rice.

Carefully take off the saran wrap and tip the riceball onto a tray or plate.

Take the salt and carefully sprinkle some salt on one side of the riceball. Using chopsticks, carefully turn the riceball over and sprinkle the other side with salt as well.

If you want, you can also use different types of furikake. The one we had was akashiso which is really a salty herb. Put rice into the bowl (with the saran wrap of course) and pour the furikake generously over the rice.

(I know my above pic doesn't show it to be 'generously, but you get the idea. ^.^) Turn the rice over and pour some more. Hot rice is hard to mix so don't even bother. Using a spoon, turn the rice over to get seasoning everywhere.

After that, mold the riceball as you did with those that have filling. Pressing it down into a triangular shape. Of course, now you don't need to think of 'pushing' the filling to the middle since there is no filling. Also, there is no need to salt furikake riceballs since there is already salt in there.

Now we have riceballs that need nori! Pick up nori and take a riceball up with chopsticks. Cover them up as you like. ^^;

Usually, the nori is sliced/ripped if it is too big, allowing the rice to show through. The retangular form of the nori stays and it being smaller just allows for it to wrap neatly around the triangular shape. Of course, you can have round onigiri or onigiri with irregular shapes. It's all up to you.

Itadakimasu!