Omusubi in my Pic-ken-nic Basket

This is partially in reponse to G-lato and our chat this morning. I had made some musubis for a beach picnic with some of my friends during Spring Break. The pictures inspired G-lato to try and make some himself and he told me of the disastrous results. So here’s a response blog to that.

Omusubi or musubi is basically a ball of rice with a filling inside. Its a snack food you can eat with your hands and on the go. Perfect for those hectic work days. So without further ado…

Tools:
rice cooker
mold (or you can use your hands, its faster and uniform with a mold)
spoon

Ingredients:
short grain rice
salt
water
nori sheets

Filling:
umeboshi
tsukudani

Regarding the short grain rice. It’s just regular run of the mill, short grain is sticky enough so the ball stays together. Long grain rice don’t stick, it’ll fall apart. I made that mistake a long time ago when I first tried to make musubis. Ended up eating my spam musubis with a chopstick for lunch. G-lato made that mistake this past weekend, heehee.

Cook your rice as you normally do except salt the water before you cook it. Put enough salt into the water that when you taste it, it has the taste of salt and is a little salty. Don’t put so much that you’re tasting sea water. This will give a little flavor to the rice.

This mold that I use, along with 2 cups of rice, gives me about six musubis. So depending on your mold, how tight you pack it, your musubi yield could differ. This mold gives me about 1.5″ thick musubis. The plate holds salty water (not sea water!) for me to dip the top of mold and my spoon into. This should prevent the rice from sticking too much. If you’re molding with hands, this water goes on your hands so rice don’t stick to you and at the same time, gives the rice ball a nice slightly salty outer coating.

Left picture, I use Shirakiku’s honey umeboshi (plum) for my ume musubis and ochazukes. You can use anyone you want but try to get the umeboshis that are soft and plump. I’m sure anybody that’s eaten store bought bentos have experienced the little hard and tart red koume (ko-ume, translates to little plum or baby plum. I think.) that sits in the middle of the rice. Don’t put a koume into your musubi. Its hard to take out the seed anyways. The other filling I’m going to use is tsukudani/seasoned seaweed paste. This stuff is fairly cheap if you consider that you only eat a little each time with your rice. It comes in regular flavor (as pictured) and also with bonito or mushroom. I haven’t tried the latter two yet but I hear they’re yummy. I’m going to try the brand Gohan Desu Yo! after this since my friend, liltree, raves about it.

Right picture, I’ve popped the seed out of the umeboshi here. Seeds are on the left and mines for the snacking. Right is the soft pickled plum to go into the musubi.

Fill the mold with a small amount of rice. Ideally it’ll be enough rice so that when it’s compressed, it’ll be about half the size of your musubi. From the pictures you can see that I’ve put the filling in the middle of the musubi. Try not to put the fillings too close to the edge. A peek here and there is okay. You want the top and bottom layers of rice be able to meet and stick to each other. If the filling you are using has sauce, try to drain as much as the sauce as you can. Sauce, though yummy, will make that musubi crumble and prevent the rice from sticking.

After you put the filling in, add more rice to make the top layer. Press down gently with the spoon you are packing with to make sure that there aren’t any spots that need more rice. You’re going to find that the corners tend to need a little more rice. Remember to dip your spoon into the salty water here and there to prevent excess sticking. Press down into the mold with the mold lid and make sure you compress it well. Flip the mold over, give it a hard tap onto the table and shake/jiggle it out.

A quick word about nori/seaweed sheets. If you look, there’s a rough and shiny side to the sheets. The left sheet in the left picture has the shiny side up. Its generally shinier and has less lines and indentions. This is the side that faces outwards when wrapping a rice ball. The right sheet in the left picture has the rough side showing. Its not as reflective and shows more lines and indentions. This is the side that touches the rice. Think of those lines as grippers. Click on the picture for a bigger picture.

The right picture is step one for wrapping musubis. There’s several ways, this is just one of them. Tear a standard nori sheet in half, lay the shiny side down, put the rice ball on the rough side near the top as shown. You’re going to wrap the sheet around the nori. The edge of the rice ball facing the excess of the nori sheet is the “bottom”.

Step two, with the excess nori sheet and “bottom” of the musubi facing you, fold down the top two edges of the nori onto the sides of the musubi (like folding down ears). Lift the excess nori sheet side up to touch the bottom side of the musubi. Wrap the remaining sheet onto the open face of the musubi and fold down the upper sides so that your musubi resembles a triangle. To keep the “ears” down, moisten it with a bit of salty water.

You should have this:

An alternate way to wrap musubis is to put a strip of nori onto one side. Its where the fingers would go to grip the musubi when eating to prevent rice from sticking to the eater. Sometimes this way is done because those convenient nori snack packs are the right size for this and they’re usually flavored with teriyaki or something similar.

As you can see in the above picture, the right musubi with the tsukudani had a little too much sauce. Its almost leaking through so structurally, that musubi is a little weaker. It might fall apart later when someone eats it.