Sprinkle on seasoning for rice, furikake [ふりかけ]
Furikake [ふりかけ] is a sprinkle on seasoning for rice used to enhance the flavour of rice. It usually contains salt, small strips of seaweed, sesame seeds and various other flavourings such as fish, eggs or vegetables...and MSG.
I always knew MSG as 'ajinomoto', because that's how my parents referred to the stuff. It turns out that it's just a brand name for a food brand sold in Malaysia - more or less equivilent to Knorr (for the Europeans) or Maggi (for the Asians). They sell 'flavour enhancing salt' better known as monosodium glutimate...as well as stock cubes and other easy cook sauces and whatnot. I thought it was a bit of a weird company name, but after learning a bit of Japanese and seeing that Ajinomoto is such a big brand in Japan the company name makes a lot more sense (I just assumed it was a Malaysian company). Aji [あじ or 味] means taste or flavour (just as it does in chinese I assume, wei4 味) and as motto [素] means essence, then their MSG laced products aim to the root of all your flavour.... ahhhhhhh, it all makes sense.
That's all by-the-by, and conveniently ignoring the proclaimed carcengenic side-effects of eating MSG (not you Mihiri - I wouldn't eat you, and anyway I doubt you are even in the slightest bit bad for health*) these sprinkles are often unnaturally coloured but disturbingly tasty. Particularly good on cold bento [弁当] rice, but equally good on hot plain white rice. Furikake can easily be found in the condiment section of any Japanese supermarket...usually next to the nori [のり] - seaweed strips, and katsuoboshi [鰹節] - thin flakes of dried, fermented, smoked tuna also known as bonito and the same stuff they put on Okonomiyaki as a garnish and likes to wave at you from the top of the food due to the heat. Usual packs are about A5 size and are resealable pouches containing about 30ish grams of salty goodness. They are also sold in 'mini packs' enough for one serving of rice (2.5grams) so that you can pop a pack along with your bento.
*only about 5 people will get this joke. And that's only if they ever read this...MSG...
Photo of rice from: http://donhoku.hudson.co.jp/blog/archives/2006/06/post_187.html
Images of Tanaka's furikake from: http://www.tanaka-foods.co.jp/
4 comments:
I would like to give you a huge THANK YOU for letting me know the name of this. My mother was from Nagasaki and used to feed this to me when I was younger. I never knew what it was called as I was never taught Japanese and could not read the writing on the package. The packages have changed over the years it looks like but I LOVE THIS STUFF. My mom passed away in 1992 so I never knew what this was called. Thank you so much for your mention in your blog
I think it is 味の素 "essence of taste", not 味のもっと。
Marcel, you are totally right. Sorry for my mistake!
Thanks for the name of this! similar story to above. Back in primary school, I used to have a friend who was japanese and I went over to her house a lot. When it was dinner time, her mother gave us these little seaweed packets so that we could sprinkle these all over our rice. I was addicted XD and Ling let me bring some of these packages home~ we grew apart when she moved to australia right before 4th grade. I couldn't read japanese at the time so I didn't know where to get more... I kept making my own by cutting up bits of seaweed, salt and other various flavoring powder but it never tastes the same as in my memories, ya know? :D thanks a bunch!
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