I love Japanese food.
I love going to outdoor parties.
I kind of started this tradition of busting out with massive vegetarian sushi on the last day of a long party. I would love to keep my tradition alive, but making sushi while camping takes forever. And the rice never comes out perfect on a camp stove. I've already started precutting all my veggies at home to save time...but still....just the process of rolling those things out takes a while.
And I cant preroll them because the seaweed gets soggy and gross.....
or so I thought......
my research lead me to the Japanese grocery store in Japan town where I made the most novel discovery/
During lunch time, the grocery store sells a lot of premade food that I've never seen before, simply because it always runs out before I usually do my shopping, which is late in the evening. They had rice balls and hand rolls...so I picked one because I KNEW that the Japanese would not sell prepackaged food with soggy seaweed. I was right.
This is kind of hard to explain but...when I unwrapped my rice ball, I saw that the seaweed was wrapped individually from the rice ball...but it was done in such a way that all you had to do was unroll the plastic, move a piece of it over, and then roll it back up. Your fingers never even have to touch the food. It was amazing!!
Does anyone have any more info on how this is done? Where can I buy that kinda thicker than saran wrap plastic wrap? Have any of you beautiful people experimented with this sort of thing before?
I think that I'm going to try to roll some sushi using saran wrap instead of nori while rolling. Hopefully, I will just be able to pull off the saran wrap and replace it with nori right before serving. I'll post my results closer to Monday...but I would love to hear everyone's thoughts.
I love going to outdoor parties.
I kind of started this tradition of busting out with massive vegetarian sushi on the last day of a long party. I would love to keep my tradition alive, but making sushi while camping takes forever. And the rice never comes out perfect on a camp stove. I've already started precutting all my veggies at home to save time...but still....just the process of rolling those things out takes a while.
And I cant preroll them because the seaweed gets soggy and gross.....
or so I thought......
my research lead me to the Japanese grocery store in Japan town where I made the most novel discovery/
During lunch time, the grocery store sells a lot of premade food that I've never seen before, simply because it always runs out before I usually do my shopping, which is late in the evening. They had rice balls and hand rolls...so I picked one because I KNEW that the Japanese would not sell prepackaged food with soggy seaweed. I was right.
This is kind of hard to explain but...when I unwrapped my rice ball, I saw that the seaweed was wrapped individually from the rice ball...but it was done in such a way that all you had to do was unroll the plastic, move a piece of it over, and then roll it back up. Your fingers never even have to touch the food. It was amazing!!
Does anyone have any more info on how this is done? Where can I buy that kinda thicker than saran wrap plastic wrap? Have any of you beautiful people experimented with this sort of thing before?
I think that I'm going to try to roll some sushi using saran wrap instead of nori while rolling. Hopefully, I will just be able to pull off the saran wrap and replace it with nori right before serving. I'll post my results closer to Monday...but I would love to hear everyone's thoughts.
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Japanese Genious/ How to avoid soggy seaweed?
Fri, July 18, 2008 - 7:49 PMWe absolutely love onigiri (the rice balls wrapped in nori with something savory in the middle)!! Yes, if you wrap either the rice ball or the maki in saran wrap and then add the nori before eating you will avoid the sticky mess it makes when it becomes soggy. If you do this for the maki (rolled sushi) you must dab the seam with water to get it to stick together.
Here's a recipe for the rice balls:
ONIGIRI
cooked rice (black rice and brown rice mix, brown rice and millet, or just brown rice)…best if pressure cooked so it stays sticky
OR use polished white short grain rice
sea salt in a shallow bowl
optional: toasted nori, dry red shiso, umeboshi with pits removed, cooked salmon, sesame seeds, wakame, fresh green shiso
Bowl of water
Dip your hands in the water bowl. Place the top of your right hand and knuckles in the bowl of salt and then rub the salt on the palm of the left hand.
Take about 80 grams of rice or rice blend listed above and pack into a ball or triangle.
Variations include placing umeboshi or cooked salmon or tuna in the middle. Perhaps roll the ball in sesame seeds or mix in the rice in the beginning. A good combo is red shiso mixed in with the rice and placing umeboshi in the center. Another good combo is wakame, green shiso, sesame seeds and sometimes small bits of salmon.
Anything goes.
Wrap in toasted nori or leave plain.
Another varition is to fry the onigiri. The Takahashi’s on Komeichi Farm in Wakayama-Ken mix with the rice with sauted onions and walnuts. Then lightly pan fried in olive oil.
If on the go and want to avoid soggy nori …wrap rice ball in saran wrap and place toasted nori sheet in a small ziplock bag and keep flat. When ready to eat, remove both and wrap.
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Re: Japanese Genious/ How to avoid soggy seaweed?
Mon, July 21, 2008 - 7:23 PMMmmm thanks for the yummy recipe.
I think that the rolls turned out okay....I used a brand of rice I havent used before, the Rainbow Grocery sushi rice that they have in bulk, and I found it to be reaally unsticky. I put a piece of saran wrap on my sushi rolly and made a pretty big roll...cucumbers, lightly steamed asparagus, carrot slithers, avocado, and toasted sesame seeds. I rolled it in the saran wrap and stuck it in the fridge for a couple hours. When I pulled it out and unwrapped the wrap I was hoping that the roll would be pretty firm but it wasnt! The rice was kind of falling apart. I was still able to plop it on the seaweed and eat it though! Yummy...but not so technically pretty.
I'm gonna try it with onigiri light you suggested.
Mmmmmm.
Oh, and welcome to tribe, you are new, yes? Howdy there.
On small note....sometimes people in this tribe can be pretty sensitive to any meat/fish eating references, especially because its a vegan/veggie tribe. Its cool, I actually like to know what traditional ingredients different cultures use in their food...but yeah, just so you know for the future ^__-
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Re: Japanese Genious/ How to avoid soggy seaweed?
Mon, July 21, 2008 - 7:36 PMYou must be talking about these:
wilddragonchase.blogspot.com/200...html
I use them all the time. Awesome invention - although this guy uses it wrong.
