Pandas and Onigiris

My kids love rice and what they consider Onigiri: plain sushi rice wrapped in seaweed. We finally found some Furikake seasoning this week and everybody liked it so now I need to get some Furikake containers for their lunch boxes :)

Our lunch consists of three Onigiri, apples and orange slices, energy bites and seaweed Arare which are Japanese crackers wrapped in seaweed.

For the younger kids I made smaller Onigiri and they packed apples, oranges, energy bites and Arare as well.

The kids loved decorating with our new panda picks and I think they came out very cute :)

My sister asked me the other day for a quick picture tutorial on how to make these very plain Onigiri because she wanted to make some to dip in different sauces and I made this tutorial on my phone - so pardon the light and quality - but I though some of you might like to see it.

Typically, I steam the rice and let it cool until it is only slightly warm. I put about one Tablespoon of rice on a small piece of plastic wrap and either form a ball by kneading the rice or twist the top of the foil until a ball forms. In this tutorial I used some seaweed and a seaweed stamp and made first a round rice ball with face. You can also cut a long strip of seaweed and wrap the rice ball in it to look more like an Onigiri. Beware that the seaweed will "shrink" once it absorbs some of the moisture from the rice so cut the strip a little longer then necessary!

Hope this helps if you are looking to make some very simple rice lunches!