Fried Onigiri (Rice Balls)
By: Feral Cooks
Published: Sunday, April 23, 2017 - 3:57pm

Ingredients




Cooked rice (slightly sticky)
Ground pork
Sake
Mirin
Soy sauce (shoyu)
Beaten egg
Panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
Oil for frying or deep frying

Preparation

1 Cook the rice (on stove or in rice cooker). 2 Sauté the ground pork until almost cooked through. 3 Add sake, mirin and shoyu to the ground pork. 4 Simmer until liquid is cooked away and absorbed by the meat. 5 Thoroughly drain any remaining oil/fat from the meat. 6 Mix meat and rice and form into “rice balls.” Alternatively, you can use an onigiri maker like the one pictured. 7 Freeze the onigiri so they do not deteriorate or crumble in the next steps. 8 After onigiri is completely frozen, dip each side of each one in the beaten egg(s). 9 Roll in panko until covered on all sides. 10 At this point, they can be pan fried or deep fried.

About

Rice balls in Japan are called onigiri, and they contain cooked rice and usually some flavoring, meat or vegetables. After a trip to an Italian restaurant that served something similar, I got the idea of making fried Japanese rice balls.