Ume Shiso Onigiri

I’ve been struggling this year to make lunches and packed dinners on my busy dragon boat practice days. Usually my lunches consist of leftover dinners from the previous day but because of dragon boating in the evenings, I have not been able to make easy dinners that can be eaten on the go.

Here is one of my pre-practice dinners that is one of my go-to easy meals. Onigiri is a Japanese rice ball wrapped seaweed. You can mix different furikake into the rice as well as have different fillings. This onigiri uses ume or salted plum, shiso leaves and perilla furikake.

Chop up the ume or salted plum as well as the shiso that is in the salted plum. Add this to your cooked sushi rice. Sprinkle some addition perilla furikake. Mix all together.

I used a onigiri press but you can make these with your hand. First, add some rice to the bottom of the press, add some raw fish and another layer of rice. Press the rice and filling so that you have a tight rice ball. Add a square of seaweed to the bottom of the rice triangle. This will prevent the rice from sticking to your hands, and plate.