Mundane Appreciation Asian Correspondance
Onigiri - The Japanese Rice Ball Snack
By Liam Conroy
It's 19:48, and I've just arrived back from the supermarket. I'm a bit peckish, but the missus doesn't want to eat yet. Luckily I picked myself up an onigiri, at the local supermarket. An onigiri, or filled rice ball, is roughly analogous to a sandwich in the UK. It is a triangle shaped lump of sticky rice, filled with a vast array of fillings, from tuna mayo (what I'm going to eat just now), through to umeboshi (a very tart, pickled plum), to prawn. Surrounding the rice ball is a sheet of nori (sheet seaweed, the type most typically associated with sushi).
Now, surrounding with with seaweed poses an interesting problem. The seaweed, minutes after making contact with the rice, starts absorbing the moisture from the rice, making it soggy, chewy and generally unpalatable. The problem this poses is in the packaging of onigiri, which must remain refrigerated on shelves for potentially a few days before being consumed. Luckily, those clever Japanese food manufacturers have come with a wonderfully mundane solution to this problem, to which I'm going to share with you here.
Here's the onigiri in all it's glory. Important things to note are the numbers, 1, 2 and 3 as well as the red line.
The first stage in this specific journey into the mundane begins with the red strip. You pull this down, separating the triangular rice ball into two halves.
After it is split into two halves, the genius begins. You grasp one of the two corners of the split (typically the 2) and start pulling. This not only pulls the outer packaging away from the onigiri, it also pulls a piece of plastic away that is separating the nori from the rice, keeping it's edibility intact. The nori only comes into contact now with the rice. .
The other half being removed. Notice the incredibly smooth action of the pull, the nori barely disturbed as the separating plastic pulls out.
It's a touch hard to see from this shop, but you might just be able to catch the separating plastic in the right half.
Ready to eat!
There's plenty more mundane to share in the future, from vending machines, to automatic trunk spinner/dryers in swimming pools, to garbage separation and collection. Please be patient (In an orderly line kind of fashion) and I'll prepare more mundane articles shortly!
