Rice Balls

Shape onigiri with wet hands instead of a mold, keep the rice soft until noon, and find the wheat hiding in nori, soy sauce and imitation crab.

Makes

2 lunches

Hands on

25 min

Start to finish

55 min

Keeps

Same day only. Refrigerated rice goes hard and crumbly overnight and does not come back.

• 1 cupshort grain sushi riceShort grain is doing the work. Long grain will not hold a shape no matter how you press it.
• 2 tablespoonsrice vinegarPlain rice vinegar only. Malt vinegar is made from barley.
• 1 tablespoonsugar
• 1 teaspoonsalt
• 1 cantuna, drainedCanned tuna in water or oil. The flavored pouches sometimes carry a soy or wheat based seasoning.
• 2 tablespoonsmayonnaise
• 2 sheetsroasted nori, cut into stripsPlain roasted nori is seaweed. Seasoned and snack nori is usually brushed with soy sauce, which is brewed with wheat.
• 1 tablespoontamariStandard soy sauce is made with wheat. Most tamari is not, though a few brands still include it, so the bottle needs reading once.

1. Rinse the rice in cold water, stirring with your hand and pouring off the cloudy water, four or five times until it runs nearly clear.
2. Cook it with a scant 1 1/4 cups of water.
3. Warm the rice vinegar, sugar and salt until dissolved, then fold it through the hot rice with a spatula, cutting rather than stirring. This seasoning is what keeps the rice soft and tacky instead of drying out.
4. Mix the tuna with the mayonnaise while the rice cools to a little above room temperature. Hot rice steams itself sticky and cold rice will not hold together at all.
5. Set a bowl of water with a splash of the rice vinegar in it beside you. Wet your hands before every ball, and re wet as soon as rice starts clinging to your palms.
6. Put a scoop of rice in your palm, press a dent in the middle, add a spoon of tuna, and close the rice over it.
7. Press the ball into a triangle or a puck with three firm squeezes per side, then set it down. More handling than that packs it dense.

1. Nori goes on at the table or not at all. Wrapped around a rice ball at 7am it is chewy leather by noon, so send the cut strips in their own small bag.
2. Pack the balls tight against each other and against the walls of the box. A loose ball rolls, knocks a corner off and arrives as rice.
3. Tamari goes in a small screw top sauce cup, not a packet a kid has to tear open over their lunch.
4. Tuna and cooked rice both want to stay properly cold, so the box sits flat against the ice pack.
5. Whole balls beat cut rolls for a younger kid. Nothing to unroll, nothing that falls apart, and they can eat one with one hand.

• The rice is hard and crumbles instead of sticking. It went in the fridge overnight. Refrigerated sushi rice firms up and pressing does not bring it back, so these get made in the morning.
• The ball came apart in the box. It was shaped from rice that had gone cold, or it was pressed once rather than squeezed firm on every side.
• The rice stuck to your hands more than to itself. Dry hands. Keep the bowl of vinegar water beside you and re wet before every ball.
• The middle is dense and gluey. The ball was reshaped several times. Three squeezes per side and set it down.

Soy sauce is the first thing to move out of this dish, because standard brewed soy sauce is made from roughly equal parts wheat and soybeans. Tamari is the swap, and most tamari is wheat free, but a few brands still brew with wheat, so read one bottle carefully and then buy that one. Nori is the second: plain roasted sheets are seaweed and nothing else, while seasoned and snack nori is usually glazed with soy sauce. If you fill a ball with imitation crab instead of tuna, read that package, since surimi is bound with starch and wheat starch is a common choice. The same applies to furikake sprinkles, which are normally built on soy sauce derivatives, and to tempura crunch, which is wheat flour. Short grain rice, rice vinegar, canned tuna, mayonnaise, cucumber and avocado have nothing to check.