How to Make Spicy Tuna Salad with Rice
Or, lazy onigiri.
I visited Japan last month for the second time in my life.
The first time I visited Japan, I was concerned mostly with consuming as many iconic Japanese foods into my mouth as was humanly possible. I tore through ramen shops and omurice restaurants, curry pan stands and rice cracker carts, and oden, chazuke, sushi, and unadon specialists. I sampled nattō and and yuba and every shade of miso I could find.
But somehow in the midst of all this glory I never managed to eat any onigiri, the portable and delicious rice balls that frequently come wrapped in nori or stuffed with all sorts of yummy fillings.
I rectified this during my second trip. I tried a convenience store onigiri filled with pickled plum on day one and quickly got hooked. By the end of the trip I had tried well over ten types of onigiri from mom-and-pop shops and convenience stores (my favorite 7-Eleven variety, for the record, was stuffed with rape leaves and wasabi).
One popular variety of onigiri contains tuna salad—either a more western-style salad that’s essentially just tuna and mayo, or a Japanese-style salad that contains soy sauce and dashi as well as mayo for a more savory flavor.
I really enjoyed this method of eating tuna salad and began making my own tuna salad onigiri once I came back to the U.S. But I also frequently don’t feel like going through the work of forming individual onigiri and so have also developed a far lazier but equally rewarding preparation of tuna salad with rice. It contains more vegetation than a normal tuna salad and frankly isn’t very Japanese, but it is very yummy. I made it for dinner tonight, and if you’d like to try it yourself, the recipe roughly looks like this:
Spicy Tuna Salad with Seasoned Rice
Ingredients:
For the tuna salad:
- 1 can of tuna packed in water (can omit entirely or replace with fried tofu if you want a vegetarian version that is still very good)
- 1/2 head of small green cabbage
- 3 jalapeños (could substitute a bell pepper if you don’t want the heat)
- 1 bunch of scallions
- 1/2 tablespoon turmeric
- 3 tablespoons mayo (can use vegan mayonnaise or Greek yogurt as well)
- salt and black pepper
For the seasoned rice:
- 2 cups Japanese medium grain rice
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce or liquid aminos (or alternatively just 1/3 tablespoon salt)
- Huge amount of black pepper, don’t be shy
- 1/3 tablespoon cayenne pepper (can omit if you don’t want the heat but try not to because it tastes very good and sort of makes the rice)
- 1 1/2 cups frozen green peas (or shelled edamame, for added texture)
- (Optional) 2 teaspoons mirin
Start by making the rice. Add all the ingredients for the rice together in a pot and make rice as your normally would, adding water to cover the rice and peas. (If you normally use a rice cooker, feel free to use it here. I tend to just make rice on the stove because I’m lazy and it’s faster).
It’s going to look sort of murky when you throw it all together at first and give it a healthy stir, but I promise it’ll look beautiful when it’s done (I have photographic evidence to prove it later in this post).
While the rice is cooking, wash your cabbage, peppers, and scallions. Lob off the very ends of your scallions and slice them into thin disks.
Remove the core of your cabbage and quarter it.
Slice the cabbage up into bite-sized pieces of any shape you like. I did a mixture of little squares and of thin strips because I like the difference in textures. Also, because I am bad at chopping things.
Cut off the stems of your jalapeños (or bell peppers) and slice them into thin discs or small squares (again, up to you as long as they are bite-sized). Feel free to dice these pieces up as finely as you’d like. Don’t throw away the seeds—add them to the salad.
Put all your sliced vegetables in a bowl and mix them together. Then add your mayo, turmeric, salt, and pepper. I would urge you to be careful not to oversalt the salad as there is salt in the rice already—wait to see how they both taste together at the end, and if you need to add more to the salad you always can.
Mix these ingredients together thoroughly before adding your tuna.
This salad is already extremely tasty as it is right now. You can eat this as a lunch salad or side salad or as a kind of coleslaw. It’s also a good base for other proteins, like fried tofu.
Drain and add your tuna. Mix it thoroughly into the salad.
You can definitely add more tuna if you’d like. I only had one can and it seems to be fine as is, but I often do two.
The tuna salad is done. Put it in tupperware and put it in the fridge.
The rice is probably done now too. Please periodically check it throughout the salad preparation to see if you need to adjust the temperature (again, you just have to make rice as your normally would). You’ll know it’s done when the rice is cooked the way you want your rice to be cooked. It should look like this now:
Yay! You’re done.
How to Eat It
There are a couple different ways to go about eating this dish. I tend to favor contrasts in temperature because I think they’re fun, so I’d recommend eating the rice fresh when it’s hot and spooning the cold salad on top of it in a bowl, or—if you’ve prepped this ahead of time and are eating it for a later meal—reheating the rice, putting it in a bowl, and then adding the cold salad on top.
Don’t heat the salad. That’s gross.
Alternatively, you can also eat both elements cold and it is still good. I do this often as well because, again, I am lazy.
It’s sort of hard to mess this one up because in the end it’s just going to be rice topped with salad. You can mix it, or you can keep it separate. Life is full of countless beautiful opportunities!
Enjoy!
