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Tea Leaf Tsukudani Onigiri

Name: Tea Leaf Tsukudani Onigiri
Total time: 30 min
Yield: Serves 2
Cuisine: Fusion
Ingredients: 50g Spent Black Tea Leaves; 2 tbsp Soy Sauce; 2 tbsp Mirin; 1 tbsp Sugar; 2 gō (Japanese rice cups) Cooked rice; To taste Toasted Sesame Seeds; 2 Nori Seaweed

Rice

⏱ 30 min

👥 Serves 2

Difficulty ⭐

Spent black tea leaves simmered into tsukudani as a filling — a creative onigiri using a Japanese preserving technique.

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📖 The Story Behind This Dish

A creative recipe that applies tsukudani, a traditional Japanese preserving technique usually used for kombu or small fish, to spent black tea leaves. Slowly simmering them down with soy sauce and mirin transforms the astringent used leaves into a fragrant tsukudani, used as a rice-ball filling. The ingredient is Western (black tea), but the point is that the cooking is completed with purely Japanese technique.

🌆 Where it's eaten: In a café kitchen, spent tea leaves aren't thrown away but simmered in a small pan — a dish born from the spirit of mottainai (waste not).

🥕 Ingredients (serves 2)

Spent Black Tea Leaves 50g
Soy Sauce 2 tbsp
Mirin 2 tbsp
Sugar 1 tbsp
Cooked rice 2 gō (Japanese rice cups)
Toasted Sesame Seeds To taste
Nori Seaweed 2

👩‍🍳 Instructions

Squeeze the spent tea leaves firmly to remove the water.
Put the leaves, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a small pan over low heat.
Simmer slowly until the liquid is gone and it turns glossy to make tsukudani.
Mix the tsukudani and toasted sesame seeds into warm rice.
Shape into onigiri and wrap with nori.

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