After the craziness and indulgence of the holidays, we tend to slow down here at the Walbacz homestead in many ways, as well as take time to reflect on the last year and plan for the coming year. Some of the things we take stock of are our pantry and food supplies, especially dry, shelf-stable goods and frozen items.

Which means.

Making room.

By eating everything in the house!

Okay, we’re not that dramatic. But our meal plans for the month focus on using up these items that take up space, that we tend to forget about in the warmer months because hello, fresh produce! This meal planning also helps us save money, as we’re focused on not purchasing more food for the coming week(s). So, we have a repertoire of meals that easily use up bits and bobs, as well as take well to changing flavors.

Enter onigiri, or Japanese rice balls.

Now, if you grew up watching way too much television like I did, and/or you’re a huge anime dork, you might remember a little cartoon called Pokemon. And aside from the gratuitous and questionable animal rights violations, the show also featured a lot of food, one of which was said onigiri.

The characters (especially the main guy) would absolutely devour rice ball after rice ball and, me being the constantly-hungry kid that I was, wanted to live in the TV and eat right alongside them. Because surely, if they’re eating literal piles of the stuff, they must be delicious.

Aaaaaanyway. Put simply, onigiri are rice balls filled (or sometimes not filled!) with basically anything you desire. Sometimes the filling is right in the middle of the rice ball, while other times it’s distributed evenly throughout the onigiri. And sometimes, they’re just fried in a bit of oil and soy sauce for an easy, cheap meal.

They’re often wrapped in nori (the same seaweed used in wrapping sushi). We’re lazy around here and don’t usually bother, but it does add a nice seafood-y element to the flavor, so I recommend trying both plain and nori-wrapped. I’ve also sprinkled mine with sesame seeds. Some common flavors and fillings that we’ve tried include:

• ground pork seasoned with soy sauce, mirin, and sugar
• peas
• okaka: bonito (katsuoboshi) flakes and soy sauce
• sliced tamago (seasoned egg pancake)
• umeboshi (salted preserved plum. Ooooh so salty!)
• seasoned tuna with mayo

…but really, you can use anything you want. Seriously. You could even fill them with peanut butter and jelly (although I wouldn’t recommend it, as you use salt on your hands as you form them. Also seaweed). But heck, if you wanted a taco meat filling, or pickles, or spicy tofu, or whatever you use to fill a savory sandwich/sushi roll/taco, go ahead, and let me know how it goes.

The method for making onigiri is simple, although the shaping takes a bit of practice (if you care about pretty shapes, that is). Like with sushi, you’ll use a Japanese short-grain sushi rice, thoroughly rinsed of starch, and if you’re shaping with your bare hands, you’ll want to keep a bowl of water handy to keep those pesky sticky grains from gluing to your skin.

You can also use a bit of plastic wrap to shape and gently squeeze the rice ball into your desired shape. We happen to keep bits of reused, washed wrap around for just such occasions, so don’t go wasting plastic wrap and throwing it out for this one purpose. I’m watching you.

The recipe below gives the basic method, as well as some of the variations we’ve used. The keys in shaping are a) not to over fill your onigiri and b) not to squeeze them too hard, lest ye squish the rice beyond its holding capacity. Also, salt your hands or wrap between each rice ball – it both flavors the plain rice, as well as keeps them preserved for longer.

All right, enough of that. Let’s make onigiri!