It's that time of the year again. Here are some Christmas and holiday gift ideas for the bento maker in your life, or even someone who's just thinking about making bento in the new year. Perhaps that person is you, in which case you could use this as a list for Santa to refer to. I've made some suggestions in all price ranges, because you never know how generous Santa is feeling.
Kombu, the leathery seaweed that is used to make dashi stock, is packed full of umami. A traditional way to prepare it is as shiokombu (salty kombu) or kombu no tsukudani. Tsukudani is a method of cooking something with soy sauce, sake and/or mirin, and sugar until it's very dark, quite salty and sweet too. It's a preserving method, since the salt and sugar greatly increase the keeping qualities of the food.
Kombu no tsukudani can be tucked into the corner of a bento box to add a little variety. It's also a good onigiri filling. Properly made and stored in the refrigerator, it keeps almost forever.
But, honestly, the thing I love about bentos is the zen-factor: it makes me excited about eating and I always spend time in the morning really thinking about what I’m putting into my body. It’s very calming. I feel like I spoil myself everyday.
I couldn't agree more with that. Planning bento lunches for yourself makes you feel like you are really taking care of yourself - something we are apt to forget when we are running around conducting Life in general. It's as important, or even more so, than planning and making bentos for your family. It's a way of pampering yourself during the course of your day spiritually as well as physically. Nothing can beat that!
I'm always looking for ways to shave a few minutes off bento prep time. One way to do this is to look at the containers the condiments, sauces and other ingredients that you use frequently come in.
I use honey quite a lot as a sweetener. Measuring it out of a glass jar is a sticky, messy business, that more often than not requires washing of a spoon, wiping drips around the lid and jar, and other little things that add up in terms of wasted time. So, for morning preperations I rely on the neat runny honey in a squeeze bottle. It's not rare gourmet honey gathered from bees who suckle on rare alpine flora (I save that kind for leisurely cups of lemon-honey-water), but it sure cuts down on bento making time in the morning.
Carrots are a staple of just about everyone's fridge I think. They are really good for you, but it can be rather hard to find different ways of eating them. This sweet, savory and spicy furikake uses up whole carrots as well as bits of carrot left over from other uses. Plenty of sesame seeds are added for flavor and texture - and they're not bad for you either. The warm, brown-orange color perks up a dull looking bento, especially on white rice.
Popular types of homemade bento, with example sites and books
As I touched upon briefly in Bento Basics, there are different kinds of bento box meals, and this site is primarily concerned with bento lunch boxes. Even these come in different varieties.
There are three main types of homemade bento lunches that are popular in Japan at the moment. Here I'll try to describe them, with example blogs and books from Japan. (Please note that all book links are Amazon or other associate links, which help to support Just Bento and Just Hungry.)
If you've been exploring the aisles of a Japanese grocery store or looking at bento recipes, you've probably encountered furikake already. Commercial furikake usually comes in small foil packets or glass jars, in all kinds of salty flavors. Furikake is a dry or semi-dry condiment that is sprinkled on, or mixed into, rice. David Rosengarten, ex-Food Network host and gourmet food expert, declares it to be a miracle in a jar.
Prepping for the upcoming week's bento making on the weekend
During the week I often get so rushed and busy with everyday life that I barely have time to stop and think about anything, including making bento lunches. So I try to do a little prepping over the weekend, when I have some extra time. I'm not really talking about spending hours in the kitchen, but easy things that can be done either in a few minutes, or unattended while I do the laundry or just take a long nap.
A little site news: I've added a new search function to the site that will search both Just Hungry and Just Bento for your convenience. It's using Google Custom Search, which is a very easy way of setting up multi-site searches. (The results do show ads on occasion, but there's not much you can do about that in Googleland.)
Like a lot of web-monkey types who sit in front of their computers all day, I work from home at least several days a week. But I still make a bento lunch in the morning for myself whenever I can. Why bother? you might ask. There are lots of good reasons for it, but here are my top five.
Onigiri On Parade: A guide to onigiri (omusubi) rice ball shapes, types and fun
Onigiri (or omusubi, the other name for the same thing), the cute little rice ball, has really become popular outside of Japan in the last few years, in large part it seems due to its iconic status in anime and manga. While the onigiri is not limited in Japanese food culture to just bento use, it's an indispensable part of the bento maker's repertoire.
Previously on Just Hungry, I've explained how to make onigiri twice: the traditional, hot salty palms way, and an easier method using plastic wrap and a cup. And you can always use a plastic onigiri mold if neither method appeals. However, I have never really gone into depth about the different shapes and kinds of onigiri. So, here it is - a parade of different kinds of onigiri: shapes, coverings, fillings, and more.
Streamlining the bento making process: Preparation and washing up
As you read about making bento, you might wonder how this is all possible to do in the busy morning. It is possible, since millions of Japanese people do it every day - and no, not all of them are stay-at-home mothers (and who is busier and more time-constrained more than a mom anyway?) Practice makes perfect, so the more you make bento the faster you get. But a little bit of preparation and forethought goes a long way towards streamlining your bento making.
Salted salmon, called shiozake or shiojake （塩鮭）, is so ubiquitous in Japan that when people just talk about "salmon" (sake or shake) they are usually referring to the salted kind rather than the raw kind (which is specifically called namazake（生鮭）). Salted salmon is a staple ingredient of bento, used as an onigiri rice ball filling, flaked on top of or mixed into rice, or just grilled.
Salted salmon is cheap and easily available in Japan, but not so outside of Japan. So I've been making it myself for some time now, and it's quite easy. All you need is a typical refrigerator that has low humidity. (If yours doesn't have excess condensation in it, and old leafy vegetables get dessicated in the corner of your vegetable bin, then it's ideal.)
The keys to bento calorie control: the box, the rice and the salt content
In Selecting the right bento box, I talked about how important it was to select the right size of box, especially if you are using bento lunches as a tool to lose weight. The other critical factor is to control the amount of rice you put into the box, if you are making Japanese style bentos.
English language nutritional databases often have inaccurate or misleading information about Japanese foods, so I rely on the official food nutrient database (五訂食品標準成分表) which is published by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and is the standard nutrition information text for dieticianss and other food professionals in Japan. (There are several consumer-friendly versions of this very useful publication available in Japanese. I use one with lots of cute pictures.)
Keep in mind that all calorie counts are approximate, since portion sizes may vary.
Most of the complete bentos (the numbered ones) are around 500 to 600 calories or lower. They can easily be made bigger or smaller just by increasing the volume of each component. (I frequently show larger "Guy" variations.)
Cup measures and weight and such
The capacity of "1 cup" varies from country to country, in a maddening way. In
the U.S. it's about 240ml (236.588238 ml); in Japan it's 200ml; in the UK it's 436ml. I use 240ml (standard U.S. cup measure) as an approximimate middle ground, especially for rice. If you are very concerned about every single calorie, it's best to invest in a good kitchen scale.
Johbisai or Joubisai: Building up a bento making 'stash'
Anyone who does any kind of art or craft work is familiar with the concept of a stash. A knitter for example has a stash of different kinds of yarn. This really helps to get the creative juices flowing. In bento making terms, the equivalent of a stash is joubisai (or johbisai) (常備菜). Literally this means 'always available food'. They are stored foods that can be kept for a while, which can be pulled out and used on short notice, and enrich and streamline the bento making process.
When I got married to a Swiss guy more than a decade or so ago, one of his friends in Germany sent him a letter congratulating him for 'catching a beautiful Asian gazelle'. The Swiss guy told me this while rolling on the floor laughing, where I kicked him hard. Ah, the point is not that I'm a spouse abuser, but that I'm nowhere near being gracefully gazelle-like. Going against the stereotype of the skinny Asian chick, I've always been on the round and cute side rather than sylph like.
This has bothered me of course off and on over the years, but I've never been good at sticking to any kind of diet. I just love to eat tasty food too much, and I also love to cook. This is where bento lunches come in.
It's that time of the year again. Here are some Christmas and holiday gift ideas for the bento maker in your life, or even someone who's just thinking about making bento in the new year. Perhaps that person is you, in which case you could use this as a list for Santa to refer to. I've made some suggestions in all price ranges, because you never know how generous Santa is feeling.
I'm always looking for ways to shave a few minutes off bento prep time. One way to do this is to look at the containers the condiments, sauces and other ingredients that you use frequently come in.
During the week I often get so rushed and busy with everyday life that I barely have time to stop and think about anything, including making bento lunches. So I try to do a little prepping over the weekend, when I have some extra time. I'm not really talking about spending hours in the kitchen, but easy things that can be done either in a few minutes, or unattended while I do the laundry or just take a long nap.
Salted salmon is cheap and easily available in Japan, but not so outside of Japan. So I've been making it myself for some time now, and it's quite easy. All you need is a typical refrigerator that has low humidity. (If yours doesn't have excess condensation in it, and old leafy vegetables get dessicated in the corner of your vegetable bin, then it's ideal.)
