We try all five flavors of the “Hyakunigiri” Kyoto steak restaurant collaborative product to see if they’ll really rice up our lives.

We’ve all been there–those nights when you forget to press the “on” button of the rice cooker and find yourself some time later with a growling stomach and nothing to eat, not in the mood for instant noodles, and also don’t have the energy to step outside. In precisely these kinds of situations, Hyakunigiri is the perfect solution.

These intriguing onigiri, or rice balls, the result of a collaboration between Kyoto-based restaurant Hyakushokuya and food company Ishii Shohin, first hit the market a few years ago. The lineup has slightly expanded since then to five flavors, all of which are high in protein and can last 100 (“hyaku”) days at room temperature despite being additive-free, making them excellent choices for an emergency food rations kit.

▼ Hyakushokuya (logo pictured below) is a famous steak rice bowl restaurant that only sells 100 meals per day at lunchtime. It’s certainly an interesting business model, but one that’s working well for them.

There are five types of Hyakunigiri:

● Steak flavor
● Curry flavor
● Chahan (Chinese-style fried rice) flavor
● Chicken burdock rice flavor
● Chicken rice flavor

You can purchase a sampling set of all five flavors, with two pouches of each, for 2,600 yen (US$18). Otherwise, sets of five of each individual flavor cost 1,250 yen, apart from the steak flavor, which costs 1,500 yen for five.

The reason that Hyakunigiri can last so long without preservatives boils down to a combination of clever vacuum sealing and a heat sterilization technique. In order to eat them, you just have to pop them in the microwave or heat the pouch in boiling water until the rice reaches your desired level of firmness (suggested heating times range from 30 to 70 seconds in the microwave or 8 to 15 minutes in boiling water).

We wanted to start our taste test with the steak flavor since it’s modeled after Hyakushokuya’s famous restaurant menu item. As soon as we ripped open the pouch, we were immediately enveloped by a charcoal-like aroma.

Its flavor also packed a strong punch, with plenty of beef and seasoning in the rice. It tasted even more like a beef bowl than we expected, and was super satisfying as a whole.

Next up was the curry-flavored rice ball. This one also released a fragrance as soon as we opened the pouch.

It was chock-full of flavor. If we had to compare it with something, it had the taste and texture of a dry curry, sans gravy. It was also fairly spicy to the point that small children would probably have a hard time eating it. We figured that a slice of melted cheese on top of it would elevate its impact even more.

Moving along, it was time for the chahan (Chinese-style fried rice) flavor.

This one had the strong taste of black pepper, which would likely polarize some diners. That worked in our favor, though, and we quite enjoyed it as a fried rice with a peppery punch.

We actually decided to re-wrap this one in the shape of a regular onigiri and bring it to a local park to finish later. It served us well as a quick bite on-the-go–and dare we say it, was even tastier when eaten outside.

The second-to-last flavor we tried was chicken burdock rice. This is one of two Hyakunigiri marketed as having a “gentler” flavor.

The bits of chicken and burdock throughout served as yummy accents within the rice. It had a comforting, quintessentially Japanese-style taste. True to its name, it wasn’t overly strong, but it seemed to get tastier the more bites we took. It was perhaps our personal winner of the bunch.

For the fifth and final chicken rice flavor, we decided to heat it up in boiling water over a gas stove as we would likely have to do during a real emergency when there wouldn’t be any electricity. This was the other Hyakunigiri said to have a gentler taste.

This method resulted in a better heat distribution and a softer overall texture. We were a bit bummed out, actually–we should have heated all of them up in this way!

Oh well. In terms of taste, it was solid, and we were tempted to add some egg to the mix to turn it into omuraisu.

The final verdict is that all of these Hyakunigiri are pretty amazing. Usually emergency food rations sacrifice flavor for functionality, but in this case, they were delicious enough to want to eat on the regular. We’ll definitely keep some on hand for those days when we just don’t want to cook–or, when we attempt some new culinary creation in the name of investigative journalism that falls a bit flat.

Reference: Ishii Shohin
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