This stuff is fantastic! For the last hour I’ve been sprinkling it into the palm of my hand and licking it up! I tried it on buttered toast, but it doesn’t go well with butter. I sprinkled it on saltine crackers, and it was good, but there was nothing to make it stick.
To back up:
Furikake (振り掛け / ふりかけ) is a dry Japanesecondiment[1] to be sprinkled on top of cooked rice, vegetables, and fish, or used as an ingredient in onigiri. It typically consists of a mixture of dried fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate.[2][3] Other flavorful ingredients such as katsuobushi (sometimes indicated on the package as bonito), or okaka (bonito flakes moistened with soy sauce and dried again), freeze-dried salmon particles, shiso, egg, powdered miso, vegetables, etc., are often added to the mix.[3]
Furikake is often brightly colored and flaky. It can have a slight fish or seafood flavoring and is sometimes spicy. It can be used in Japanese cooking for pickling foods and for rice balls (onigiri). Since 2003, furikake has increasingly gained popularity in the United States (particularly in Hawaii and on the West Coast) as a seasoning for baked or fried fish,[4] raw fish salads[5] and snack foods such as furikake party mix.[6]
It helps to like the taste of nori, the dark seaweed that’s wrapped around maki sushi rolls. (And I loved it from the first moment I tasted it.)
This is the one I’ve been eating (although I didn’t get it from amazon – it was in the newly beefed-up international section of my local HEB grocery store):
If you’re looking for Japanese food that’s “spicy”, it will be tough going (except of course for wasabi).
However, the more common furikake is based on an herb called shiso. In English it’s called “beefsteak plant” which is a head-scratcher for me, because there’s nothing remotely beefy or steaky about it, nor would I use it with any red meat. It has a light aromatic taste that I don’t know how to describe except maybe a distant cousin of wintergreen.
This is, AFAIK, the canonical use case. Topping for a bowl of rice.
It’s also used similarly for certain noodle dishes that aren’t in broth. E.g., yakisoba or zaru soba
It’s also used as a coating on rice balls, onigiri. Which is useful for making the exterior less sticky to handle as well as adding flavor.
Furikake comes in an amazing variety of flavors. They can have constituents such as different kinds of flaked dried fish, dried scrambled egg, different seaweeds, dried kimchi, different dried flaked vegetables, and even super simple ones like dried red perilla (akajiso) or a mix of white salt and black sesame seeds (gomashio).
Oh yeah. The shaved fish furikake is fun. Put it on a steaming bowl of white rice, watch the muscle fibers curl and uncurl as if it’s alive. Delight your friends (or horrify them, depending on their ethnicity and/or sense of adventure).
The Korean version of furikake is kimjaban or doljaban. Hard to find online, but it’s roasted seaweed, usually with salt and sesame oil. It comes in spicy versions as well.
You take a bowl of fresh rice, sprinkle some kimjaban on top, and eat it with kimchi. It’s the Korean version of a peanut-butter sandwich: cheap and easy to make, but filling so the kids don’t complain about being hungry in the middle of the afternoon.
Confession time. ThelmaLou hangs her head (and licks her fingers).
I ate the whole jar of furikake yesterday. Not on rice or anything else. I ate it out of the palm of my hand. I couldn’t stop! Is it any wonder I have to keep my ice cream treats in a freezer in my garage?
The question is, will I buy another jar of it… of course I will!
I used to have a bottle of this kind of furikake, and while it wasn’t bad on rice (even though it says it’s for salad and fish), I couldn’t get past the smell- it smelled almost exactly like TetraMin fish food flakes. It wasn’t the fishy smell exactly, it was that it was SO reminiscent of fish food flakes that it put me off eating it.
I love it, too. There are dozens of different types at my Japanese market, and I like to try a new one every time. I put it on rice for Japanese breakfast, and roll my onigiri around in it.
I’ve seen it used on salmon fillets, but haven’t tried that yet. I will next time.
As has been mentioned, there are many different kinds. I bought some a while ago, used it a few times, and finally wound up throwing it out. But this latest one… it must have street drugs in it or something…
Close, that would be “furikaki”. It’s like how “sake” is often pronounced “socky” when it should be “sockay”. I’m pretty sure that people will know what you mean though.
Fukikake mochiko chicken. Mochiko is rice flour that’s stickier than wheat flour and slightly sweet. Sprinkle the furikake immediately after frying.
It’s also good on chazuku (tea and rice) or okayu / congee (rice porridge). Okayu is a staple from my childhood to settle an upset stomach when you can’t eat anything else. A little salt, a little furikake and ume (pickled plum) can be kept down when nothing else will.
Be sure to read the label as some varieties of furikake contain a high amount of salt, MSG or sugar. My favorite furikake when I was young was a furikake made for chazuke, but my Mom wouldn’t let me have it too often because it contained a lot of MSG. And this was when Ajinomoto (pure MSG) and Ajishio (MSG and salt) were staples at the Japanese restaurant tables. My Mom used Ajinomoto to cook, but never Ajishio. LOL
Edit: I tried the chazuke furikake when I was much older and couldn’t believe what a sodium bomb it was! I’m tempted sometimes to try it again, but never have. When I buy furikake now I always read the label and stay away from anything with salt and sugar too high on the ingredient list. Not trying to be healthy, but otherwise it’s too salty/sweet and no salt is too bland.
FYI, shio is salt. So anything with shio in the name is probably high in salt. Same with sato, which means sugar.
