Opening Onigiri

Japanese food companies do their best to make it easy to open anything.  There is always a way to tear or open a package that often seems kind of over-engineered.  Off the shelf onigiri (rice balls) are the perfect example.

If you walk into any convenience store you will see a shelf in the fridge full of varieties of triangular rice balls wrapped in nori and then wrapped in plastic.  If the nori touches the rice for any length of time it goes all soft and looses a bit of its appeal.  So the plastic first wraps the rice, then the nori wraps the plastic and then the plastic wraps the nori.

In order to open these little parcels they packaging is printed with a “1″, “2″, and “3″ telling you which to deal with first.

Step one tear down the strip labeled”1″ until the package is separated into two halves.

Step two wiggle and jiggle “2″ corner plastic gently off of one half taking it away from under as well as over the nori.  (this takes finesse or it doesn’t look too good when you finish.

Step 3 do the same with the other corner marked “3″

tuck the nori back in again and hook in.

Alternatively, just ignore the numbers and rip open the package which ever way you can then pick up the pieces of torn nori and dropped rice and learn the hard way why sometimes it is good to follow the rules.