Savory Sprinkles

PASSIONS | by MOLLY MARTIN

SCOURING THE AISLES AT OUR LOCAL ASIAN SUPERMARKET for garlic peas — a new favorite snack — I found myself marveling at an entire section of jars and pouches all with a common word: furikake. If there’s that much of it, I thought, perhaps I should know what it is.

© Takaokaya

The story, I learned, is that in the early part of the 20^th century, a pharmacist in Japan created a product with ground fish bones to compensate for a lack of calcium in the Japanese diet. The first kind, Gohan no Tomo (“Rice’s Friend”) consisted of dried ground fish, sesame and poppy seeds, and seaweed (supposedly to mask the fish flavor).

Now most often a colorful mixture of seaweed, sesame seeds, vegetables and spices, furikake is generally considered a condiment to be sprinkled on rice. In no time at all it’s become a staple in our kitchen, primarily to give a little zing to a quick miso soup. It can also perk up noodles, pasta, vegetables, salads, sandwiches and, of course, sushi.

Some labels are mostly in Japanese or its transliteration, so squinting at the tiny stuck-on translated ingredients list can reveal the flavors. Some favorites and their main ingredient (usually along with seaweed):

• Wasabi Fumi: Little green morsels of Japanese horseradish.
• Shiso Fumi: “Beefsteak plant,” otherwise known as perilla, that pungent leaf often served with sashimi.
• Kimchi: Assorted dried vegetables, Korean style.
• Noitamago: Dried egg-yolk powder.
• Yasai Fumi: Vegetarian.

As a bonus, furikake is curiously low in sodium for a condiment featuring seaweed: 100 to 200 milligrams per tablespoon in most flavors. (A tablespoon of salt, by comparison, has nearly 7,000mg!)