Easy Onigiri – Japanese Rice Balls

This EASY onigiri recipe is flavoured with delicious Japanese seasonings and wrapped in nori, perfect for a quick snack or a tasty lunchbox treat. Read on for tips, tricks and our handy step by step guide.

Why We Love This

These are the cutest little rice ball snacks! We love onigiri because they are so easy to adapt to your own flavour combinations, and a great way to use up leftover ingredients.

You can enjoy onigiri warm, cold or at room temperature, so they’re perfect in your lunchbox or as a portable snack on the go. You can even plate them up as a tasty appetiser!

What is Onigiri? 

Also known as o-musubi or nigirimeshi, onigiri are Japanese rice ball snacks made from cooked or steamed sushi rice, furikake seasonings (and sometimes tasty hidden fillings), wrapped a nori seaweed wrapper.

In Japan, they’re either made at home in the morning or purchased from a nearby kombini (convenience store), then taken to work or school as a tasty snack or quick lunch.

Onigiri are similar yet different to sushi rolls or handrolled temaki sushi. The biggest difference is that regular sushi is seasoned with sushi vinegar while ongiri starts from a base of plain rice. We also think they are so much easier to make than regular sushi!

Where We Learned This Recipe

We learnt this recipe at a sakura celebration in Miyoshi, Japan.  After spending the morning making udon noodles with our feet (yep), it sounded like the perfect way to escape the cold, blustery weather, and maybe even try some local Japanese food. Funny how nobody mentioned the karaoke.

Plate after plate reached the tiny table in front of us as we sat on the floor, Japanese style – filled with homemade oden stew, t onigiri rice balls, and free flowing cups of sake and beer.

Afterwards, the ladies from the community took us into the kitchen and showed us step-by-step how to make onigiri by hand. They taught us that ideally want to end up with one face of the onigiri having a small indentation from your fingers, so you can see that it’s handmade.

What You’ll Need

Just three ingredients are all you need for these easy onigiri rice balls! All you need is cooked rice, a good sprinkling of rice seasoning (also known as furikake or gomashio), and a simple technique to mould it into a cute triangular shape. Wrap in a small decorative sheet of nori seaweed and your onigiri will be ready to eat!

• Rice – We recommend koshihikari rice for the best texture. Cook it in a rice cooker, a multi-cooker, or on the stove using the absorption method. Here’s a great guide on how to cook Japanese sushi rice.
• Furikake – This is a type of Japanese seasoning usually sprinkled over cooked rice. It’s made from a blend of ingredients like dried bonito flakes, sesame seeds, seaweed, egg, salt, sugar and various spices. There are so many furikake flavours out there, so look for packets of assorted furikake flavours and experiment to find your favourite! You can get them from your nearby Asian grocer or online, or even make your own. We’ve also included some optional ideas below to customise your onigiri with different seasonings and fillings. You can buy the furikake pictured below online here.
• Nori – This is the flat seaweed wrapper also used to wrap sushi. You can find it online, at Asian grocers or even from well stocked supermarkets either in full size squares or in mini pre-cut strips. It’s not essential, but does make for a great little hand hold for your homemade onigiri.

How to make Onigiri:

1. Pop your cooked rice into a nice mixing bowl. Add the furikake or rice flavouring and mix through evenly. Separate the rice into equal portions, big enough to be a large handful each.
2. Wet your hands with water and rub together with a pinch or two of salt. This stops the rice sticking to your hands and helps keep it fresher for longer.
3. Take up one portion of rice in your hands.
4. If you are hiding some fillings inside, here is where you make an indent, place the ingredients inside and fold the rice over, then lightly press into a ball.

5. Using mainly your fingertips while resting the rice on your palm, start to press and squeeze the rice into a triangular shape, rotating as you go so it’s even.
6. Place a slice of nori on the bottom of the onigiri (the rough side should face the rice) and fold it up towards to the middle of the onigiri.

Onigiri Filling & Seasoning Ideas

Our favourite method to make onigiri is to use furikake – aka rice seasoning – which is mixed through the rice itself. Here are some of our favourite seasonings, which you might be able to find on online or from well-stocked Asian grocers.

• Gomashio – black sesame salt
• Ume Goma Shio – plum sesame salt (our favourite! The Marumiya brand is delicious and also includes the cute little decorative flowers you can see in our photos)
• Katsuo Fumi – bonito flakes with seaweed and spices

And here are some delicious ideas for fillings that you can hide inside the rice ball itself:

• Shredded chicken and mayonnaise
• Canned tuna and mayonnaise with a spicy chilli seasoning
• Pickled plum – also known as umeboshi
• Simmered kombu seaweed
• Salted salmon or salted cod roe

You’re only limited by your imagination and your tastebuds. What will you add to make your own homemade onigiri?

Wandercooks Tips

• For best results, make your onigiri while the rice is still warm. This will help the rice stick together better and make it easier to form the traditional triangle shape.
• To make your fresh onigiri look more authentic, add a slice of nori around the base. It looks great and tastes great too!
• If you’re making onigiri ahead of time, it’s a good idea to store the nori separately from the rice until you’re ready to eat, otherwise it will go soggy.

FAQs

Variations & Substitutes

• Use Leftovers as Fillings – How about fried chicken, canned tuna or pickled vegetables?
• Get Creative with Shapes – Instead of triangles, try making them into squares or animals! If you’re feeling creative, use thin slices of nori to create faces or patterns on top of the rice. Careful note: In some areas of Hawaii and Japan, it is considered bad luck to serve circular or round onigiri, as this shape can be reserved for funerals.

P.S. Heaps of our lovely readers have been asking about the cute little flowers in the furikake we used to decorate our onigiri!

It’s part of a gorgeous Japanese rice seasoning we LOVED in Japan, called Ume Goma Shio (ie plum sesame salt), and it’s made by the brand Marumiya.

The good news is you can easily find Marumiya Brand Ume Goma Shio online from Amazon, or occasionally in the seasoning section of Asian import stores. Just look for the cute little white seal cartoon.

It’s super fun to use and has a lovely salty sesame flavour with a hint of ume (Japanese plum). If you give it a try, let us know what you think or make your own gomashio at home!

Want more tasty Japanese snacks? Try these:

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