Who doesn’t love a quick food hack? Luckily, TikTok is rife with them. The latest trick is a dish that involves rice, tuna, and, erm...an ice cube?
Food, fashion and lifestyle blogger Emily Mariko is credited to be the brainchild behind the dish. Since the 26-year-old from from the Bay Area, San Francisco, published the video on her TikTok channel, it has been viewed more than 29 million times.
Mariko used a few simple ingredients that you might find around the house to put together the rice dish, which is garnished with avocados and consumed with seaweed sheets.
But curiously, Mariko plonked a piece of ice into her mix of (cooked) rice and tuna, before putting it in the microwave.
Viewers can’t get enough – and many have tried their hand at recreating the stuff, with surprisingly positive results.
If you’re looking to make your own to find out what the fuss is all about, here’s what you’ll need:
Rice of choice
Tuna (can be substituted for salmon)
One ice cube
Soy sauce
Kewpie mayo (Korean mayo, but regular should be fine)
Parchment paper
Sriracha
Avocado
Seaweed sheets
Kimchi (optional)
Instructions:
Using a fork, break up the chunks of tuna and add the rice on top. Place one ice cube in the middle before covering with parchment paper to cup the food. Whizz in the microwave.
Add soy sauce, sriracha, mayo and mix. Top with avocado.
Use seaweed thins to scoop rice with. Add kimchi if you like.
Okay, so now for the ice bit. Mariko uses ice and parchment paper to steam the rice in the microwave.
Anyone who’s ever eaten leftover rice the next day might notice it has gone hard after being left in the fridge. So Mariko leaves the ice under the parchment paper to steam the rice and moisten it.
There seems to be some magic (science) behind the thing too, as the ice doesn’t actually melt when Mariko takes it out. She simply scoops the cube off of the plate.
After many, many questions about the rice, one viewer left a scientific note to explain why ice melts incredibly slowly in the microwave. They wrote: “Microwaves vibrate the water molecules inside food to produce heat. Since the water molecules inside ice are locked in place, they can’t move.”
Of course, if you’re using freshly made rice then you can probably skip the ice bit altogether. Even if you’re not making Mariko’s recipe, the ice trick might be one to try on old rice another time.