Tuna-Mayo Onigiri is a rice ball with tuna salad filling. That is generally the most popular kind of Onigiri you can buy at convenience stores in Japan. It doesn’t sound like a very Japanese flavor, but it has been loved by the young and old for over 3o years and still keeps going strong.
There are more traditional fillings for Onigiri such as Umeboshi (pickled plums) and Shiozake salted salmon. They are of course very popular too, but Tuna-Mayo Onigiri, a seemingly unlikely combination, somehow became a staple on store shelves. When convenience stores became hugely common in the 80s in Japan, a major convenience store chain developed and started selling Tuna-Mayo Onigiri in 1983. Japanese mayonnaise has a more sour flavor than American mayonnaise, similar to a salad dressing, and complements steamed rice well. People already like vinegary taste in rice, like Sushi Rice, and that may have helped for the new combination to be accepted smoothly. The convenience stores were more heavily targeted towards younger generations at first, and the new customers may also have contributed to the popularity of this new type of filling for Onigiri.
There is much more mayonnaise in this tuna salad than a usual one, and it is pretty loose. Therefore, it is a little tricky to put the soft filling inside Onigiri. Just make a deeper well and fill, then cover with more rice. You might worry about the calories in the amount of the mayonnaise; however, portion size of tuna salad per Onigiri is pretty small, and unless you eat 5 Onigiri at once, it doesn’t matter that much. You will have more trouble eating so much rice if you try to have 5 of them anyway.
It is so easy to make with simple ingredients, and try this untraditional Onigiri at home!
Tuna-Mayo Onigiri Recipe
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Ingredients
- 2 oz canned tuna
- 3 Tbsp Japanese mayonnaise
- Salt
- 4 cups Steamed Rice
- 4 pieces Nori Roasted Seaweed
Instructions
- Mix tuna, mayo, and a couple of pinches of salt in a bowl. Season rice lightly with salt.
- Wet hands with water. Take about 3/4 cup rice in one hand, press and form into a triangle shape.
- Make a well in the middle of the rice ball and put in tuna mixture. Close the well with 1/4 cup rice.
- Reshape and wrap with a sheet of roasted seaweed. Repeat to make another three Onigiri.
Video
