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Speed bento technique: making & freezing yaki onigiri, onigiri

This is another speed bento made with previously frozen yaki onigiri (grilled rice balls) that I defrosted/warmed in the microwave for good texture). The yaki onigiri worked out surprisingly well — I don’t usually have fresh rice hanging around the house, so this’ll be another time saver on mornings when I suddenly feel like rice. The homemade ma po tofu, store-bought Korean octopus panchan, steamed kabocha and juice jello cup were all leftovers, so it only took about 5 minutes to assemble this bento in the morning.

Yaki onigiri freeze extremely well, retaining their shape and flavor when packed in bento lunches and eaten at room temperature (important: reheat in the microwave before packing). Yaki onigiri are classic izakaya (pub) or bento food — very nostalgic for us. I’m lucky my husband didn’t eat all of them when I was making them!

First I made rice balls with triangular onigiri molds, then lightly firmed them up with my salted, wet hands for a flavor boost. Using molds is optional, of course — you could form them freehand if you like. In Japan, I usually saw yaki onigiri without stuffing or nori wrapping, but make them however you like best. You can grill them on an indoor fish grill (shown here), a grilling rack placed directly on a gas burner, an outside gas or charcoal grill, inside grill pan, etc. (EDIT: you can also make them over low heat in a nonstick frying pan lightly oiled with vegetable oil.) First heat the grill to medium heat, place the onigiri on the grill, and don’t move them at all for several minutes. Gently turn it over once the bottom is lightly browned as shown here. Grill the bottom half until browned, then turn down the heat to low.

With the heat now reduced to low, lightly brush the browned top with soy sauce and turn it over so that it heats through. Brush the other browned side with soy sauce, and turn it over again so that both sides have been grilled twice: once plain, and once with soy sauce. If you like, you can also brush the sides with soy sauce and grill those as well. The onigiri should now have a crisp outside crust.

It’s now ready to eat, pack in your lunch, or freeze. To freeze, first wrap each individual onigiri in plastic wrap, freeze, then put them all in a freezer bag for longer-term storage (sucking the air out of the bag with a straw — think of do-it-yourself FoodSaver vacuum-packing). To use a frozen yaki onigiri, it’s important to reheat it first in the microwave before packing (on Cook until it’s warm), otherwise the texture of the soft rice inside will be nasty. The crunchy exterior softens in the freezing/reheating, but otherwise tastes the same as when it’s fresh.

My son had a similar bento today, but with pre-frozen onigiri rolled in sakura denbu (sweet, colored fish flakes) and red hana ebi (savory, colored fish powder).

Surprisingly, you can actually prepare onigiri in advance and stash them in the freezer. No, seriously, you can — it’s in Japanese-language bento books and I saw people do it when I lived in Japan. The trick is to use very fresh rice (that’s moist and hasn’t been sitting in the rice cooker for hours), wrap each onigiri individually before freezing, and after you take them out of the freezer be sure to heat them in the microwave until they’re warm and soft again. If you thaw them on the counter or in the refrigerator the texture will be hard and nasty, so the microwave step is very important. (EDIT: If you’re concerned about microwaving food wrapped with plastic wrap, unwrap the frozen rice, place it in a bowl, then cover the bowl with a lid, microwave-safe cover or plastic wrap that doesn’t touch the surface of the food. Then microwave until warm.)

In this photo I put all of the freshly wrapped, warm onigiri (shaped in molds) on a metal pie plate to speed freezing.

After freezing, I put them in a labelled freezer bag and sucked all of the air out of the bag with a straw before sealing (like do-it-yourself FoodSaver vacuum packing). This helps ward off freezer burn.

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Published by Biggie on February 15th, 2007 tagged bento, fish or seafood, for kids, freezing, lactose free, onigiri or sushi, parenthacks, recipe, rice, tips, tofu, tutorial or how to | 102 Comments »

Speed bento technique: jello cups

Another speed bento. I had made a stash of homemade juice jello cups, so I was able to just drop one in along with a shaped egg from the fridge. The scallop okonomiyaki was leftover from last night’s dinner, so this took about 5 minutes to pack. The containers have okonomiyaki sauce, Worcestershire sauce and katsuobushi, and next to the jello cup is a tiny spoon and an Anpanman pick for the kiwi.

To speed up bento making in the morning, I made extra-firm jello with straight blueberry juice and unflavored Knox gelatine (no sugar), poured into reusable plastic food cups for packing in lunches. They’re thicker than regular Jello, so they’ll hold up for several hours at room temperature (recipe is on the Knox packets). Just drop one into my son’s bento in the morning and go! Big time saver.

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Published by Biggie on February 14th, 2007 tagged bento, eggs, fish or seafood, for kids, parenthacks, phyllo or pancake or other, recipe, tips, tutorial or how to | 15 Comments »

Speed bento techniques: frozen spaghetti

This was a super-fast toddler bento (less than 10 minutes to pack both mine and my son’s). I nuked frozen homemade meatballs, steamed the broccoli and kabocha squash in a microwave mini steamer (photo behind the cut), and dropped in a foil cup of leftover spaghetti I portioned out for freezing.

Taking a page from Japanese bento cookbooks, I froze leftover spaghetti in foil liners set in mini muffin tins. Once they were frozen through a couple of hours later, I put them in shallow tupperware for longer-term storage. This way I have a cache of homemade pasta ready to drop into my son’s lunches when I’m looking for a red-colored dish. In the morning, I just put a frozen-solid pasta cup into the bento, and it’s totally thawed a few hours later when we’re ready to eat. If I were going to microwave them I’d have used paper cups instead of foil.

As for taste, I ate my bento today (with the frozen pasta) and had a bite of my son’s (with non-frozen pasta). They tasted about the same, no significant difference in taste/texture. I wouldn’t leave them in the freezer for longer than a few weeks, though — if they got freezer burn that’d definitely affect the taste. EDIT: I now like these with a little extra sauce in a small container on the side to remoisten the pasta.

I made today’s broccoli and kabocha in this mini steamer for the microwave — I picked it up at Daiso for US$1.50. It’s sold as a steamer for meat buns, but it’s just the right size for steaming small amounts of vegetables or dumplings for lunch. It speeds up steaming time by 50%. You put a tablespoon of water in the bottom, place the steam tray on the bottom, put the veggies in, then cover (aligning the steam holes to allow venting). Nuke for 1-2 minutes and let it stand for a couple of minutes afterward to steam. It can also be used for storage if you twist the lid so that the steam release holes are not aligned. Amazon lists a similar one here and a large one here.

Here’s my lunch — the same as my son’s except it’s got roast pork instead of meatballs.

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Published by Biggie on February 13th, 2007 tagged bento, equipment, for kids, freezing, meat, parenthacks, pasta or noodles, tips, tutorial or how to | 32 Comments »

Williams Sonoma for egg molds?!?!

How did I make this barnyard snack bento for my son without a traditional rice ball mold or egg mold?

So my bento fixation is getting worse, and I’ve been browsing shops all over San Francisco looking for bento accessories in unexpected places. I wandered into Williams-Sonoma seeking inspiration. Usually I walk out empty-handed because of their prices, but full of ideas of things to buy somewhere cheaper. And then I saw these ice cream sandwich molds in cute shapes.

At first I thought, $14 for three molds that you’d only use a few times a year? Uh, pass. Then I realized that they could do quadruple-duty as cookie cutters, onigiri (rice ball) molds and boiled egg shapers for a child’s lunches. Perfect!!! Maybe even Alton Brown would approve — not a uni-tasker!

This is what the finished ice cream sandwiches are supposed to look like with the molds:

Each mold consists of three pieces, with a cookie-cutter portion, little cap for the bottom, and a shaped plunger with a raised plastic design to create the pattern (giving you the cow face, etc.).

I figured they’d work just fine as ice cream sandwich molds, cookie cutters, and onigiri molds, but I was most curious about how they’d do as hard-boiled egg shapers. You may have seen these crazy gadgets before (photo below): you hard-boil an egg, peel it while it’s hot, pop it into a plastic mold while it’s still hot and pliant, and click the lid shut. Dump the whole thing into cold water for 10 minutes, and you’ve got an egg that looks like a rabbit head or a star. Only thing is, they’re hard to come by outside Japan, and they don’t seem to have many other uses. (July 2008 EDIT: You can get the egg molds below cheaply at Ichiban Kan’s online store for US$1.50 per pair (US shipping only), J-List starting at $3.20 per pair (international shipping), and from eBay sellers. Check out my list of online bento stores for additional sources.)

I boiled three eggs, peeled them while they were still very hot, and plopped them into the wet molds. But because these molds weren’t originally designed for eggs, they don’t have little latches to keep everything closed tightly around the egg while it chills in water. I improvised by looping a thick rubber band around the plunger & mold to apply even pressure. Here they are taking a cold bath:

Fresh out of the mold, this is what they look like:

The star and pig shapes turned out okay, but the cow shape would have been better had I used extra-large or jumbo eggs instead of large. Had to be careful removing the plunger from the face of the egg. Next time I may spray the face of the plunger with a little Pam (vegetable oil spray) before putting the egg in the mold.

Deciding to dye the star and the pig eggs, I filled a couple of ramekins halfway with cold water and mixed in a little food coloring (blue and red). Left them in for a few minutes until they got to a color I liked.

Voila! Dyed, molded eggs from an ice cream sandwich maker!!!

I looked around on the web for other places to find them, and found Tovolo ice cream sandwich molds on Amazon.com slightly cheaper, and in additional designs. Mission accomplished! (July 2007 EDIT: Evidently WalMart is now selling the cow/pig set for US$5, and Williams Sonoma has the three-piece set back in stores on sale for US$10. Full update here.)

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