Onigiri (お握り or 御握り), also known as omusubi (お結び) or nigirimeshi (握り飯), is a Japanese rice ball made from white rice. It is usually formed into triangular or cylindrical shapes, and wrapped in nori (seaweed). Onigiri traditionally have sour or salty fillings such as umeboshi (pickled Chinese plum), salted salmon, katsuobushi (smoked and fermented bonito), kombu, tarako or mentaiko (pollock roe), or takanazuke (pickled Japanese giant red mustard greens). Because it is easily portable and eaten by hand, onigiri has been used as portable food or bento from ancient times to the present day. Originally, it was used as a way to use and store left-over rice, but it later became a regular meal. Many Japanese convenience stores and supermarkets stock onigiri with various fillings and flavors. It has become so mainstream that it is even served in izakayas and sit-down restaurants. There are even specialized shops which only sell onigiri to take out. Due to the popularity of this trend in Japan, onigiri has become a popular staple in Japanese restaurants worldwide.

Onigiri is not a form of sushi and should not be confused with the type of sushi called nigirizushi or simply nigiri. Onigiri is made with plain rice (sometimes lightly salted), while sushi is made of rice with vinegar, sugar and salt. Onigiri makes rice portable and easy to eat as well as preserving it, while sushi originated as a way of preserving fish.

History

Prehistoric

On November 12, 1987, lumps of carbonized grains of rice, thought to be riceballs, were excavated from a building belonging to the Yayoi period (2000 years ago) in the Sugitani Chanobatake Ruins in Ishikawa Prefecture. The carbonized rice had traces which revealed that it was formed by human hands, thus it was initially documented as “the oldest onigiri.” In subsequent research, it was thought to be steamed and grilled, rather than boiled like today’s rice, similar to another dish called chimaki. Since then, it has been academically called the “chimaki-shaped carbonized rice lumps (チマキ状炭化米塊)”.

Pre-Modern

Before the use of chopsticks became widespread, in the Nara period, rice was often rolled into a small ball so that it could be easily picked up. In the Heian period, rice was made into small rectangular shapes known as tonjiki so that they could be piled onto a plate and easily eaten. At that time, onigiri were called tonjiki and often consumed at outdoor picnic lunches

Modern

In the 1980s, a machine to make triangular onigiri was invented. Rather than rolling the filling inside, the flavoring was put into a hole in the onigiri and the hole was hidden by nori. Since the onigiri made by this machine came with nori already applied to the rice ball, over time the nori became moist and sticky, clinging to the rice.

A packaging improvement allowed the nori to be stored separately from the rice. Before eating, the diner could open the packet of nori and wrap the onigiri. The use of a hole for filling the onigiri made new flavors of onigiri easier to produce as this cooking process did not require changes from ingredient to ingredient. Modern mechanically wrapped onigiri are specially folded so that the plastic wrapping is between the nori and rice to act as a moisture barrier. When the packaging is pulled open at both ends, the nori and rice come into contact and are eaten together. This packaging is commonly found for both triangular onigiri and rolls (細巻き).

Rice and shapes

Usually, onigiri is made with boiled white rice, though it is sometimes made with different varieties of cooked rice, such as:

-Okowa or kowa-meshi: glutinous rice cooked or steamed with vegetables

-Sekihan: rice cooked with red azuki beans

-Maze-gohan: rice cooked with various preferred ingredients

-Fried rice

-Brown rice

The rice may be seasoned with salt, sesame, furikake, dried shiso flakes, and so on.

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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

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  • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    42 minutes ago

    /r/northernlion doing an interesting bit that displays how using preemptive irony to subvert norms quickly leads to… something

  • someone [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    2 hours ago

    Is there a socialist equivalent of “forgive me, Father, for I have sinned”? At my workplace today, as part of my regular duties, I had to place an order for Starlink service and hardware by order of the owner of the company. I felt like I needed a shower afterwards.

  • CrispyFern [fae/faer, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    2 hours ago

    ok, but hot tubs are better if you chop up onions and carrots and celery into them first. That’s not just something cannibals made up, it genuinely is better.

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netMEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    Got taken to the cleaners on a Craigslist used bike deal. Fuck it, it’s sunken cost time. I had to replace the crankset. Pulled it off, but the bottom bracket was fucked up too, so I took it apart, regreased it, and assembled it. It’s still kinda fucked up, but it is SO MUCH better than it was. Put it all back together with the new crankset and new pedals and it’s pretty sweet actually, but I cannot fully tune the front derailleur due to a broken barrel adjuster. The better two out of three gears are working reliably at least.

    Folks, this can happen to you too if you stop cycling for 10+ years.

    It’s not all bad. I’ve met a bunch of my neighbors while sitting on the bench fucking around with this piece of shit. One even offered to give me a copy of their garage key to store this thing in.

  • Rojo27 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
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    My depth perception sucks, but seems like its been getting worse and I keep putting off going to the eye doctor to get a new prescription. In the past few days I’ve:

    -Crashed a bike into a barrier

    -Flinched as someone opened the door for me even though I was nowhere near the door.

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  • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    6·
    5 hours ago

    CW: MENTIONS OF BLOOD, NEEDLES AND PAIN

    Today I had to get my lower right wisdom tooth removed through, of course. It was the first time EVER I’ve had surgery of any kind whatsoever, never before I had to subject myself to anything worse than random checks and stuff like that so I was very worried and nervous. It turns out that tooth developed caries and also broke itself god knows when, and then it developed an infection that was quite painful. So I went to a clinic to have it checked and the odontologist told me I had to get it removed after the infection went away, and then gave me some antibiotics. They charged me about 40 USD for the visit not counting the removal and the meds.

    Later on a friend told me that the Faculty of Odontology, which is part of the much larger Faculty of Medicine that belongs to the University of Buenos Aires (Public), would do removals very cheaply, because in private clinics without insurances you’ll be talking about 90 to 120 USD. So I visited the faculty and oh god it’s really cheap, the initial checkup is like 14USD and it includes a panoramic Xray. Once you do that you can visit the faculty from the next day onwards to have it thoroughly checked and removed, but I had to be there are 6AM because you’ll be treated by students being led by professors, and classes usually start at like 7:30AM. So I went there last friday for a visit, they told me they couldn’t get it removed just now because I still had an infection (I couldn’t really open my mouth wide), so they booked me for a check today. This morning I went there very early again, some members of the staff were on strike so I didn’t know if they would treat me, but it was alright. The idea was to have it checked, see if the infection was gone, but they saw I had good progression and offered me a removal surgery for that same moment. I agreed, and paid like 15USD for the entire operation… all being done by well mannered students with modern equipment under professional supervision.

    The process though was awful. I was very tense, couldn’t stop shaking lol. The local anasthesia wasn’t kicking in properly, the guy who treated me had to give me a couple of shots. I have a strong fear of needles too, which didn’t help, especially if that needle goes into my mouth where I’m like SUPER vulnerable lol. Then the surgery began after I didn’t feel much pain, but I still felt the movements and the pressure being applied for the removal. Horrible experience, I also have a very low tolerance to pain, I’m hemophobic as fuck and I hate surgical/medical instruments so much, so it was intense. I tried to keep my eyes closed and keep it cool but sometimes I would open my eyes and see blood and damn, I hate that. Well, finally the damn thing was removed and they sutured the hole, which was a messy process because I wasn’t cooperating, I had a lot of involuntary movements lol

    It fucking sucked, I felt VERY exposed and vulnerable. I hate pain, I avoid it all I can, and my biggest fear was to feel a sudden and very painful moment. I made a lot of jokes during the process, to ease the tension and to relax the two guys operating me because I thought they might get frustrated. But it was all cool, very good people doing incredible things almost for free.

    The public Unviersity gave me a stupidly cheap surgery and I will be forever grateful for that. Death to javer milei and death to “israel”