Suprise Find: Ginger Frosted Sembei

As I mentioned in my "I'm back" post, I now live in a very remote area. What is more, I also live in a small town (less than 10,000 people). There are very few local markets and I can charitably say that local tastes match local political views; they are very conservative. That means that the restaurants around me focus mostly on burgers, bad steak, pizza, pasta with heavy sauces, Americanized Mexican, and sandwiches. The most exotic place is a Thai restaurant and there is one American Chinese place which offers very pedestrian options.

I'm not mentioning this to criticize the local food scene because I know that one's taste in food is one of those things that is shaped by experience. People like what they like because it is what they grew up with and it's not like the people who live in rural areas made a conscious decision to have limited food options. If anything, we can blame their parents and grandparents. I certainly can say my parents have terrible taste in food and any restaurant scene that their patronage cultivated would be populated by places with leathery, over-cooked meat, canned vegetables, noodles, and potatoes. It would be even more grim than the reality I currently live in.

The reason that I mention the limits here is that any Japanese food I find at local markets outside of Pocky and some more common cooking ingredients (soy sauce, rice vinegar, etc.) are a suprise find. When I locate one of these finds, I'm stunned because I can't imagine the locals buying them. That leads me to today's shocking find of frosted ginger sembei.

I found these at Grocery Outlet Bargain Market. I've been told it's the west coast equivalent of Aldi's, but I can't verify that as I've never been in an Aldi's. The thing they are supposed to have in common is food at low prices because it was over-produced, unpopular, or is getting on in years. I'm guessing this sembei showed up because it was unpopular, but it's hard to know for sure.

The first shocker was that it was in a local market at all. The second was that it was being sold for 50 cents a bag. In the Bay Area, I had to pay $4-$6 per bag for this same brand of sembei. In Japan, this would cost the equivalent of $1.50-$2.00 for a bag. It was insanely cheap by any estimate. I bought 25 bags. I am not exaggerating. My pantry has stacks and stacks of these.

The difficulty in marketing these to the American market is explained somewhat by the description panel on the lower right panel of the bag. In particular, the fact that the manufacturer feels it is necessary to say, "no topping needed" is revealing. Americans see rice crackers as a savory item that needs a topping like a Quaker rice cake. Buyers have no idea what these are until after they've purchased them. In fact, when I bought them, the cashier looked perplexed at what they were. I'm guessing just me, and possibly the Japanese members of the taiko club a great many miles South of me, are the only customers and potential customers who know what these are.

What these are is a very, very tasty snack with a surface that makes you think of the moon with luscious sugary craters. They'd better be great if I'm going to drown myself in stacks of crispiness. They are light and somewhat sweet with enough ginger to whisper kindly at your tongue, but not to overwhelm. They snap without being too brittle and actually do melt in your mouth if you leave them in there long enough. It's easy to eat far too many at one sitting, but given that each large cracker is only 25 calories, it's hard to get fat on them. I've actually be fairly responsible with these and limit myself to one packet (two crackers) per day. I will likely have my stash for months at that rate, but they come with an enormous oxygen absorber packet so I'm betting they won't go stale. If they start to, I'll just have to watch a good movie and start consuming them by the bag-full so as not to waste my luxurious investment of $12.50.

I should note that I had confidence in these and how good they'd be because the company that mades them, Kameda, is one that I recognized from my time in Japan. In fact, I have reviewed no small number of their sembei in the past including one sweet variety made of chocolate. They rarely let me down and I was pleasantly surprised to see something from that company at a local market. While this clearly is packaged for the American market (since everything is in English), the rice crackers (sembei) themselves are precisely the same as what you'd get if you shopped in Tokyo. And, yes, I'd absolutely buy them again, even at a higher price.

Information:

Where I bought it: Grocery Outlet Bargain Market
Price: 50 cents/bag

Mizuho Arare Handmade Sembei (Wasabi)

Have you ever purchased a blueberry waffle, blueberry muffin mix, or any commercially produced product which is blueberry flavored? If you've done so, there's a very high chance that the product you've consumed contains no blueberries whatsoever. Most "blueberry" is candies that are flavored to taste like the real thing, but actually have little to do with it. That's because real blueberries are expensive, not particularly sweet, and troublesome to handle in their fresh state (as they will mold or go bad rapidly).

Most people don't realize when they're being sold something as something it's not. Even when they learn the truth, if they're satisfied with the taste, they generally don't care. I think the same might be said for the often faked flavor of wasabi. I've read that most wasabi in the United States is colored horseradish. I have no idea if it is fundamentally different in taste, but I'm guessing it may be different in terms of the overall flavor depth and the experience of eating wasabi.

I've said before that wasabi is different from other spicy flavors (that's spicy in terms of being "hot") in that it burns the back of your nasal passages. Intense wasabi will punch you, literally, in the back of your nose. These rice crackers can be a full freaking assault to your entire nasal system. I found that the intensity varies, but if you get a particularly potent one, it will flood your nasal passages from back to front in a flash of painful intensity and hit the back of your throat for good measure. By random chance, if you get one of the less intense ones, it'll just offer a strong, but relatively closer to average hit toward the back.

The nuggets offer a bit more than just the pain that can accompany wasabi. They smell vaguely of soy sauce and have a nice savory undertone that lingers on the middle of your tongue quite awhile after you've recovered from the wasabi attack. The saltiness and overall savory nature is undercut by the presence of sugar. If you've ever made soup and added a little sugar to it (the Japanese often do), you'll note that it'll mellow out any too sharp flavors. Incidentally, sugar is the third ingredient in these after glutinous rice and soy sauce (and before "wasabi powder"). If you're watching your sugar intake, these may not be the best choice.

The texture of these is hard and crunchy. "Arare" sembei is denser, less airy and spongey, and crispier than what is often called "soft" or "fluffy" sembei. I think these are designed to be enjoyed mainly with drinks, particularly alcohol, but anyone who likes wasabi can dive in without potential inebriation to off-set the nasal beating.

I only paid $1.50 for these at Daiso Japan, and I'm torn about whether I'd get them again. I like them quite a lot in terms of the taste and they are made with real wasabi. However, when I hit a powerful piece, it truly is a bombastic experience in my nasal cavities. It reminds me a bit of snorting soda through my nose and not in any way pleasant. I'm not sure if the price I may pay in pain is worth the experience, but I'd probably go for another round of these in the future after I had forgotten that some nuggets are more pain than pleasure.

Kuchidoke Happy Turn Rice Crackers

I've been told that "Happy Turn" is a brand that many folks in Japan find familiar and comforting. The happy sembei (rice cracker) on the cover gives them the same sort of warm and fuzzy feeling that an American might get from Tony the Tiger. I'm sure he doesn't yell as loudly or often about how "grrrrrreat" things are, but I think one can do without the bellicose nature of some mascots.

Besides the familiar anthropomorphic rice cracker, I noted the color scheme of the bag. It is most elegant in its largely white design. I'm not sure what inspired it, but this is not a winter release since it is still listed on Kameda Seika's web site as an available product. I expected this to be white chocolate because of that, though there was no indication of that on the bag. That's probably because I've had white chocolate sembei before, and loved it. It was likely wishful thinking. Perhaps these are appropriate for weddings? At any rate, it caught my eye and then it grabbed my wallet.

"Kuchidoke" means "melt in your mouth" so, I was expecting something that was more in line with the kinako or cheese "mochi" sembei that I've had in the past. Those balls of spun fat and rice literally melted in your mouth. When I opened the bag and saw the same old planks of sembei that I have always seen from Happy Turn, I was disappointed, but I remained hopeful that there was going to be some magical quality to these which differentiated them from regular Happy Turn.

As it turned out, there was no magic at all. Don't misunderstand me. These are good sembei, albeit quite vinegary ones. It didn't seem particularly "melt in your mouth" compared to regular Happy Turn. Okay, maybe it was a little bit softer and less crisp, but it was nothing like the "fluffy" sembei I'd had before which literally melted like shelf-stable ice cream in my mouth. These were fresh, somewhat crispy, and rather super-charged in their flavor (like the Happy Turn 200% version, but perhaps not quite as dusty).

This is a very savory rice cracker and a well-made one at that, but it really doesn't deliver much in the way of textural variation. If you like strong, vinegary flavors, then this is going to be a pleasure, but don't expect them to melt away in your mouth or to be a very different experience from conventional Happy Turn sembei.

Peakal Cheese Rice Crackers

They're "all-natural"! I guess that including silicon dioxide and maltodextrin is good then.

When I was living in Japan, many of my American friends would tell me how much they loved sushi. Since I don't love sushi (I think it's okay, but I'm not mad about it), I found their zeal for it a bit curious. It turns out that they weren't eating the sushi that I was eating because much American sushi is a more elaborate affair than Japanese sushi.

When I say, "elaborate", I mean that it's a more flavorful mess. When it's not, people tend to saturate it with soy sauce, wasabi, etc. to make it tastier to their Americanized palates. In no way do I mean this as a criticism, so please don't misunderstand me. I believe we develop tastes based on the food we're raised with and Americans like strong flavors. Japanese like subtle ones. Sushi in the U.S. and how it is eaten tends to reflect this. My point is that the sushi I had experience with and was so-so about was not the same as the sushi Americans were mad about.

As my regular readers (you know who you are, and I love you for following my drivel) know, I became a huge fan of rice crackers (sembei). Most Americans are a bit so-so on them, or simply don't care for them at all. I can understand that, with flavor-blasted chips and crackers, sembei might seem like a rather boring affair, but I have come to understand that that is not the reason. The reason is that the rice crackers that I was eating in Japan are not the rice crackers that people are eating in America.

I buy most of my sembei from Asian markets and all of it, so far, has been produced for the Japanese market. Occasionally, I do want to try something a bit more "mass market". That is, I pick up something which is sold in a generic American grocery store that anyone living anywhere in the U.S. might conceivably have access to. I do this because I want to see if I'll ever find something which has verisimilitude to what is sold in Japan or whether Americans are doomed to that animal that they call "rice cracker" which seems to be the ugly mutant cousin to Japanese sembei.

I found this package of rice crackers at "Big! Lots". I was there bargain hunting for a memory foam mattress topper and the snacks lured me in. You may scoff at my pedestrian shopping habits, but as long as I'm being paid a dime a post for my blog efforts, I'm going to economically more suited to the "Big! Lots" crowd than the Macy's one. This was about 70 cents, so I didn't have to pay much for my disappointment.

They look a little diseased.

When I tried rice crackers for the American market before, I noted that they were always quite a bit lower in calories. It's clear that the fat content on them is lower and that has a profound impact on the texture. In Japan, rice crackers really are more like chips in that they rarely spare the oil, especially when it comes to the "arare" (small, super crunchy, hard nuggets of rice cracker) ones. In the U.S., someone has clearly decided anything sold as a rice cracker has to be health food. Sure, the calories are lower, but the crackers are tough and crunchy in an unpleasant way. Without the oil, they are harder to chew and bite into and lack the crumbly, crunchy nature of "real" sembei.

These failed on the texture front, but they also failed on the flavor front as well. Though labeled as "cheese", there was barely any flavor powder on them. It's as if they sprinkled enough to add a vague orange cast in select spots and stingily hoarded the rest. Actually, there's a very good chance that there really just wasn't enough oil on the surface to hold onto any salt or flavor powder. It could be that this is a little like air-popped popcorn. Nothing sticks to it so it's like eating Styrofoam packing peanuts.

I didn't expect much of this, but I do still hope to find some good mass market rice crackers without resorting to Asian markets. There are two reasons for this. One is that I'd like to find something that can be had at regular stores. Another and much bigger issue is price. Buying Japanese sembei is not for one who is light in the wallet. If I'm lucky, I can find something on sale for around $2, but far more often than not, they cost $4.00-$6.00 a bag. I have had many experiences in which I've seen some sembei that I loved in Japan, but I simply could not justify paying such a price for a snack. This is especially so when the portions are relatively tiny. So, while this was a disappointment, the search will carry on.

Sanko Seika Lemon Sembei

There's an episode of Monty Python in which people rather inexplicably keep saying "lemon curry" in a very quizzical fashion. I must say that I feel the same way about the concept of "lemon sembei". Since sembei can be sweet, it does have permission to be so, perhaps this isn't so strange, but I have to say that this is the first time I've run across this particular flavor. When I saw it at Marukai Japanese market for about $2.30 (about 230 yen), I couldn't resist despite the potential for disappointment.

These crackers are kin to Sanko Seika's venerable "Snow Inn" line of frosted sembei. I've reviewed them somewhat unfavorably in the past, but the general flavor concept is starting to grow on me. In fact, I may revisit the original Snow Inn crackers at some point in the future.

When you open the packet, they don't smell especially lemony. The first bite reveals just a hint of lemon flavor and a very modest tang. This is a salty sweet with a decent balance of both. Instead of them coming together in a battle royal, they sit quietly in their play pen making up new and imaginative flavor games. It's not a flavor punch, but I think it works well with its subtle flavor tones.

This was unique, but not in a bad way as such things can be. I was very surprised at how well it all came together, though there is a bit of a sense of disharmony when the "baked rice" flavor of the sembei comes through and it's mixed with a twist of lemon. However, once I got used to that concept, I really enjoyed these. They may not be everybody's cup of tea, but if you like lemon and sembei, and have a marginally adventurous palate, I'd recommend giving them a try. They're also only 53 calories per two sembei packet. That's a pretty good deal.

Incidentally, the yen is getting a little weaker and prices in Japanese markets are going down. I noticed when I went to Marukai that things were looking a little more affordable. This is bad news for folks working in Japan, but good news for those of us on the other side of the ocean buying stuff as imports.

Random Picture #166

The display above is from a sembei shop in Sugamo, aka, the old ladies Harajuku. That means that the former was the shopping mecca for the retired set just as the latter was that for the pink-mohawk and kilt-wearing crowd that was under 21. These rice crackers feature the likenesses of common cartoon characters in Japan. Two are easily recognizable, even by those who are not animation dorks (the pair in the middle, Hello Kitty and Pikachu). Flanking them are the lesser-known characters (in the West) of Anpanman and Doraemon.

It is my feeling that everything is what it is for a reason and that, if you take a moment and think, that you can learn something about people and culture. When I went to an exhibit of Incan art in Tokyo, I noticed the motifs on the artifacts and what they said about the ancient culture. The same can be seen in modern culture, but you have to stop and ponder. This is from Sugamo, and it tells you more than sembei makers with too much time on their hands indulge in copyright infringement. This is the place for grandmas to buy their red underpants, but they're selling rice crackers with designs for children on them at the premium price of 400 yen (about $4.00) a cracker. That means that they are marketing to grandmas so that they'll buy expensive stuff for the grandchildren as much as offering to gird her loins in scarlet for the right price.

Random Picture #149

The Japanese are great at fusion, and I don't mean just cooking. They can take disparate elements and mix them up to create something uniquely Japanese. This might explain the propensity to create things like wasabi KitKats. Of course, a better explanation might be insanity, or taste buds that are completely confused. You have to tip your hat to them though for being so open to merging their culture with the cultures of others.

This bag of Disney rice crackers fuses three, and arguably four, cultural elements. The curry comes from India. Mickey Mouse is pure Americana, and the rice crackers are Chinese and/or Japanese. Three great tastes that taste great together. Who wouldn't want to have a cartoon rodent smiling at them with his tongue sticking out as they enjoy a salted snack food?

Want Want Salad Sembei

Don't let the title of this post fool you into thinking I had double desire for these sembei. That's simply the name of the brand. It is actually quite familiar to me with it's logo of an excited young man in what appears to be an old-style professional wrestlers costume. I never saw this brand in Japan, but this particular sembei (that means "rice crackers", to those out there who are uninitiated in this lingo) is the product of an allegiance between a Japanese and a Chinese company.

The Japanese end of this alliance, which I recognize based on one corporate logo shaking hands with the other on the back of the pack, is Iwatsuka Seika. I reviewed quite a few of their sembei when I was living in Japan, and figured that seeing what the deal is with these was worth a dollar (90 yen). That's all I paid for them at Daiso Japan. That makes them cheaper than similar crackers in Japan. Unless they are the worst sembei ever (and even bad sembei tends to be pretty decent), they were almost certainly going to be worth a buck.

Before I get too far, I have to say that I wonder what the deal is with these. Iwatsuka already has its own line of crackers. Why would they produce these in cooperation with a Chinese company? The obvious answer is that making these in China is a lot cheaper than making them in Japan, but they have to keep the name of a Japanese company on them in order to waive away the food safety boogeyman that haunts every Japanese food consumer. That illustration of hands shaking is an assurance that a reputable Japanese company has the backs of the Japanese people. They're probably sending armies of managers to the factories and they're frowning in concentration as they oversea the underpaid foreign labor. Of course, I don't know if this is true, and you absolutely should not take my word for it, except for the boogeyman part. That's absolutely a fact.

Personally, I don't care where these were made or who made them. I only care about how they taste and play out in terms of texture. If they're crispy and light and enjoyably savory, it's not my problem if hundreds of managers from Iwatsuka develop permanent frown lines on their brows and around their mouths.

Incidentally, I have no idea why these are called "salad", but this flavor name is common in Japan. I've heard that it refers to salad oil, but I have no way of knowing if that is correct. It doesn't taste anything like any sort of salad, and the ingredients list does not include typical flavoring agents for any sort of salad I've ever had. It does include MSG, and rosemary extract as well as salt and pepper. There are other generic flavorings listed, and soy sauce is probably in there, but the truth is that these are not powerfully flavored rice crackers.

Not everything has to be powerful to be enjoyable, however. These carry the standard "baked rice" flavor as well as possess an crispy lightness. The flavor is extremely mild and what the Japanese and food snobs call "umami". It is rather generically savory as all of the included flavors merge into a melange which provides a clean and uncomplicated flavor profile. The crackers are wrapped individually as 2-packs and each is about 35 calories.

In the U.S., there are plenty of plain potato chips and someone must love them. I'm guessing that salad sembei is the equivalent of such chips in Japan. I liked these, but I didn't "love" them. They certainly filled the bill for a salty snack and especially did well toward taking me back to the flavors I associate with living in Japan. For the price, and sembei can be very expensive in the U.S., I'd be very happy to pick a bag of these up occasionally again.

V Select Soft Sembei (Salt flavor)

You can tell someone has spent a long time in Japan when... okay, I swore I'd never start a sentence like that because I hate when people talk like that. They mention things like you start to bow while talking on the phone or you gaze at, hold, and handle any business card you are given like it is a priceless family heirloom, blah, blah... For me, well, I'm afraid that there are residual things which show how long I was in Japan, but they are a little unusual. One is that, after more than 6 months in the U.S., I still am moving to the far edge of the sidewalk (the left side, of course, not the right as most Americans do) when I see a bicycle as I expect to have to let it pass me. For those who aren't in the U.S., I'll say that bikes aren't supposed to and generally do not ride on sidewalks at all here so it's a thoroughly misplaced response. Another is that I continue to be appalled that people wear shoes in their homes because it really does make the floors utterly filthy (truly, it does). Finally, I talk about "salt" as if it were actually a flavor rather than a seasoning, as is the case with these sembei.

In Japan, they don't talk about things like "plain" potato chips. They say they are "salt taste" or "salt flavor". The same goes for this sembei, which is, after all, the equivalent of a potato chip in Japanese culture. The front of the bag even says "salt flavor" on it in the little green box. So, I have some residual tendencies that I either need to get over or accept as ingrained parts of my personality. These are, "plain" sembei in American parlance. Incidentally, I struggle similarly when offering tea to guests. I ask them if they'd like it "straight", as if it were some sort of alcoholic beverage that one could take with a mixer or straight up. The first time I asked a guest how she's like her tea and she said, "plain", I was strangely surprised at that.

There was a time when I would have never welcomed "plain" sembei into my life. That's before I left Japan and have found myself hopelessly sentimental about many of my experiences there. My husband and I went to Nijiya Japanese market and he talked with a fellow who was putting out samples of fish cakes and choux cream (er, cream puffs) about how we patronized their establishment because it was so "natsukashii" (sentimental). As I perused aisle after aisle of over-priced snacks and food, my eyes were drawn to this because it was a mere $1.29 for 102 grams/3.5 oz./20 crackers. This priced it squarely at the same point as similar crackers at my former local Lawson 100. There's nothing more sentimental than cheap snack fodder, especially for someone who has been writing about such things for 4 years!

The company that makes these, "V-Select", let's us know that the "V" stands for "valor". There are three major lines, and "select" translates to "cheap". You'd think that they'd say the "V" stood for "value" in such a case, but I guess they wouldn't want to apply that so liberally to their "organic" or "quality" lines. This is actually a store brand in Japan for a market chain called, yes, "Valor". Their web site isn't very forthcoming about products, but the line includes things like jam and pork products. Unsurprisingly, store brands are no more exciting in Japan than they are in America. They just have different writing on them.

As for the sembei themselves, they are called "soft", but in Japan that means they are light and airy rather than dense and harder. These are still very, very crispy. There's really nothing "soft" about them. This mainly means they are easier on your teeth and less brittle. It's the difference between a cheese puff or ball and a Cheeto.

Since these are plain ("salt") sembei, they have a very clean baked rice flavor which I used to find pretty obnoxious in my early days in Japan, but now I'm not only nostalgic about it, but enjoy it. The saltiness level is just enough to add interest, but not so much as to make you drink glass after glass of liquid to compensate. The flavor has depth and is subtle, but is not boring, at least not if your taste buds haven't been flavor-blasted into oblivion such that you can no longer detect gentler flavors. Incidentally, that does happen to people.

All nerve endings or senses get saturated and loose sensitivity. If you read sex advice columnist Dan Savage, he'll tell you that this works for certain very sensitive areas of the body as well and he advises men in particular not to use a death grip on certain parts of their anatomy during certain types of activities or they will lose sensitivity and find it hard to enjoy other types of activities (this isn't an adult-content blog so you'll have to fill in the details with your fevered imaginations). The same goes for the tongue, and I don't mean when talking about the types of things Mr. Savage talks about. I mean in regards to detecting flavors of things. If you're the type of person who has been employing the equivalent of a "death grip" on your taste buds, rice crackers like this are going to bore you into a deep slumber.

Fortunately for me, years and years of blandness in Japan and judicious protection of my palate since coming to the U.S. allows me to taste a plain rice crackers subtle pleasures. To me, this sembei not only tastes pretty good, but it taste like Japan. At 50 calories per two (palm-size) cracker packet, this satisfies a craving for a salty, crispy snack quite nicely. I'd recommend them to anyone who hasn't wrecked their ability to taste, and advise those who have to stay clear.

Sanko Seika Kakimochi Sembei

One of the things which I have not had any sort of access to since coming to America is sembei (rice crackers). Yes, I can find rice crackers in shops that look like sembei, but I've discovered that they don't taste like it or have anywhere near the same texture or flavor depth. What little I've had has been too soft and lacking in snap and lightly dusted with flavoring on the outside. In other words, they are nothing like the richly flavored crackers I tended to experience in Japan. The adjective that comes to mind is "flaccid".

Fortunately for me, Nijiya Japanese markets carry real Japanese sembei. Yay! Unfortunately, they tend to be much more expensive than what I could buy in Tokyo and I cringe at the idea of paying 3x as much (or more) for a bag of rice crackers. Sure, I love them, but I also love Pop Chips and they essentially fill the same empty snack hole in my life. Salty stuff is salty stuff. Well, not quite, but for the price of one modest package of sembei, I can buy an enormous mega-party-size bag of barbecue Pop Chips at Costco. I can snack for a month or so on that, but I was starting to long for my old sembei experience.

Fortunately for me, these appeared to be on sale when I was at Nijiya. Instead of something in the $3-$4 range, these were about $2 (157 yen). This priced them pretty much at the same point as if I were at Inageya supermarket back home. There are 12 individually wrapped crackers, each is about the length of your palm and a little less than half the width. By the way, I used to give exact measurements, but someone wrote that I was too precise, so now I just try to give a visual approximation. That may still be too much information, but each is a single serving so it's important to know what you're getting. One cracker is 45 calories.

When you open the package, these smell like concentrated soy sauce and baked rice. Ah, smells like living in Japan and being given snacks at tea time by an office lady. The taste is a good blend of soy sauce, savory spices (chicken, mirin (sweet sake), sesame, bonito (fish flakes), etc.), and seaweed. On the surface, this isn't necessarily a mix to warm the cockles of my taste buds, but they come together in a savory melange of goodness. You can't really detect anything individually except the soy sauce and seaweed. The remainder forms a backdrop of rich flavor depth. Coupled with the super crispy cracker, this is a sublime experience.

It could be that my absence from such snacks has made my heart grow fonder. Scratch that. This is the sort of thing I'd completely take for granted if I were still living in Japan and experiencing it after so long an absence made it much more enjoyable. This really took me "home" to living in Tokyo again as it had a blend of flavors I'm unlikely to experience from any product that wasn't exclusively designed for the Japanese market. I'd certainly buy it again.

Healthy Creations Sesame Rice Crackers

I knew that there were going to be options for some of my favorite Japanese snacks in America. One of the things that I had high hopes for was a tasty Americanized version of sembei or rice crackers. When I checked Amazon, there were quite a few versions of them sold packaged for the American market. Note that they aren't necessarily made in the U.S. These were made in China, which actually was sometimes the case for the snacks I had in Japan as well. Just because Japanese writing is on a package, it doesn't mean it was made in Japan. Many of the things I purchased were made in Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, or China. This is because Japanese manufacturers take advantage of the same reduced labor costs as American companies do.

In fact, one little tidbit of information that many people who live in Japan don't realize is that there is a reason there is so much Aussie beef in Japan is that the cattle farms are owned by Japanese business people. Of course, it is still good for the Australian economy to have the farms in their country, but it doesn't represent the sort of opening of the domestic market that many people believe it does. The Japanese only allow copious imports from a country when they have a vested interest. Otherwise, it's rumors about pesticides and heavy restrictions. I'm not sure if that's the way it is in every country around the world, though frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if it happened like that to some extent everywhere. And these were made for a company in California so, that's a little support for my assertion right there.

Getting to the snack at hand, I've got a lot of options for rice-based crackers to sample here in the U.S. Even in the little markets I have access to at present on the San Juan Islands, there are a minimum of 6 varieties. Most of them, however, are all the same flavor, sesame. There's nothing wrong at all with sesame. I love it, after all, but I'm going to get pretty wistful for the wasabi, yuzu koshoo, and kinako crackers I could get in Japan if my selection doesn't widen when I leave here in about a month.

I found these crackers at a tiny little market on the South side of the island I'm on. It happens to be the second of only two markets on this one. I bought these at that place for two reasons. The primary one was that this little market had an interesting and eclectic blend of items from all over the world and their business wasn't exactly booming. I wanted to support them by spending my money with them rather than the bigger chain market on the other side of the island. The other reason was that they were pretty reasonably priced at $1.89 (153 yen) for a 3.5 oz. (100 gram) bag. It's nice to support the little guy when it costs less than supporting the big guy. Since I doubt my readers will be in the San Juan Islands, I'll mention that you can get them from Amazon, but I'd be surprised if markets all over the U.S. don't carry them.

These crackers don't smell like much of anything though they do have the vaguely rice crackery smell. They do have that same baked rice flavor that I associated with rice crackers in Japan, and there is a pleasant sesame seed flavor, but it's the flavor that you get on the top of your hamburger bun. That's because these are made with white sesame seeds, not the black ones that are more common in Japan. Since they are mildly salty, the delicate sesame flavor is able to shine through. The point on which these really fell short for me was the texture. They are hard and slightly tough. I'd wager this is because they are baked rather than fried and contain less oil than Japanese sembei.

While the bag does not say anything about how these are made, the fact that 18 crackers have only 120 calories speaks volumes. Each cracker is 2 inches/5 cm. in diameter, so they aren't exactly tiny. The ingredients list is also quite short with rice, white sesame seeds, sunflower oil, and maltodextrin as the main ingredients and less than 2% sea salt, sugar, and kelp extract. I don't know if that actually makes them "healthy", but it doesn't look too bad.

I wouldn't buy these to just eat by themselves because I've been spoiled by the light, crispy texture that comes from Japanese "hard" sembei (their way of referring to deep-fried, crispy, thin rice crackers). However, they do make a good cracker to accompany cheese, dips, etc. I also think that other people may be a bit less fussy about the slight toughness of the texture than me. Eating these makes me appreciate more than before the delicate balance between the taste and texture of a product and the "healthiness" of it. These are definitely lower calorie than Japanese rice crackers and have a nice flavor, but they aren't quite as much fun as the less healthy and stronger tasting rice crackers I could get in Tokyo. Still, I'd buy them again.

Random Picture #104

Click to see a larger image.

Sometimes you have to wonder just how much cultural differences affect perception. Take the illustrations on these two bags of sembei (rice crackers). To me, the inset pictures look like worms crawling out of the crackers. To a Japanese consumer, does this look like fish or shrimp goodness climbing into the crackers? I've never wanted to know sales stats on a particular product as much as I'd like to know them about these.

Befco Yuzu and Salt Sembei

Before I started this blog, I was reluctant to sample a lot of Japanese foods. To be perfectly honest, I didn't know what a lot of the traditional flavors were because I just didn't pay that much attention to the food. I've tried a lot of things, and not everything has really floated my boat, but I've come to really be attracted to two flavors in particular. One is kinako, or toasted soybean flour, and the other is yuzu. For those who don't know, it's an Asian citrus fruit with a flavor which is both unique and familiar. It's piquant without being too sour or tart. Every time a new yuzu-based product comes out, I am drawn to it.

In fact, I am so in love with the flavor of yuzu that I was willing to overlook the inclusion of seafood flavors, including shrimp, when deciding to sample this. Shrimp tends to be the equivalent of my own gustatory ipecac, but I had some confidence that it won't be an overblown flavor in these rice crackers. Why? Well, simple logic... There isn't a picture of a shrimp on the bag so, you know, it can't be all that intense. Right? If it was important, they'd definitely show a picture, probably a "chibified" shrimp that looks elated at the idea of being consumed by hungry salt fiends. 

I found them at Okashi no Machioka for 168 yen ($2.09). That gets you 88 grams (3.1 oz.) of crackers. It stocks pretty much every Befco product that comes out, at least for a little while, so it's a good place to find new and interesting flavors. I've made fun of the name "Befco" before because it sounds like the Biffco industries from the second "Back to the Future". The good people at Befco finally explained the naming to me on the back of the bag. It stands for "Beika Frontier Company". I'm not sure what they are on the frontiers of, but there it is... another Japanese company name which is in English and pretty much ignores all logic. 

The crackers smell like a pleasant melange of savory flavors including a meaty scent reminiscent of pork and chicken, yuzu, and seafood. The flavors are multi-layered. The first thing you get is, most unfortunately, oil. These are one of the more heavily fried versions of sembei. The next level is the meaty elements with garlic, shrimp, beef, and crab. Finally, there is an astringent finish of yuzu. The texture is nicely crispy, but still easy to bite into. These are puffy, but not airy. There's just the right amount of salt. Each is 26.5 calories, but they aren't the biggest crackers. They're around half the size of my palm. 

These are good sembei, but for me personally, they didn't make the cut. I'm thoroughly spoiled, however, since I live in Japan and can buy a huge variety of such snacks. It's not that they are modestly enjoyable and don't have an excellent texture, but they are too oily and the yuzu element isn't strong enough for me. I'd still recommend sampling them if you're a sembei fan, but I can't see buying them again.