To round out Back To School Week, here are my top 10 rules for bento making. They are the rules or philosophies that guide all the content that you see on JustBento. They've evolved quite a bit over the years, but they are what I'm happy with at the moment. A version of these rules appear at the top of The Just Bento Cookbook too. They're the rules I try to live by in my daily bento life.

Sometimes I stray away from them when my life goes haywire - like trying to renovate an old house in a foreign country, and then getting infected by an insect bite which turns into a zombie bite...well you know, things happen. But I when I can return to these rules, I know that life is nice and normal again.

1. My bentos have to be reasonably healthy and balanced.

I make sure to include protein and carbohydrates in every bento box. I always add vegetables. Besides being nutritious, they are so colorful! In my bentos vegetables are not an afterthought—they take a starring role alongside the other main ingredients. I sometimes add fruit as a dessert, though occasionally I treat myself to a small brownie or something.

I sometimes see bento boxes online that are not quite balanced. One I saw recently (I'm not going to link to it, since it's not my objective to embarass anyone) had a little bit of chicken and assorted M & Ms, plus one half of the box was filled with Cheese Whiz. Another one had a whole compartment of candy, some Pocky sticks, and a sandwich. Is that a bento, or a just box of snacks? Some commercially available lunch sets (cough Lunchables cough) may look rather like that, but that doesn't mean you have to follow their example.

I realize that it's sometimes difficult to pack lunch for picky kids. This is where cute charaben bentos come in - they were originally devised as a means for Japanese moms to get their picky kids to eat healthy food. Why not try some vegetables cut into flowers, or a healthy sandwich with a smiley face, and see how your kids react? Another idea that I talked about previously is to just use stickers.

2. Keep it simple.

I don't have the time to spend making multiple items for my bentos, unless it's for a party or something. I stick to a maximum of four or five different items per box for everyday bentos; many of my bentos contain three items or less.

3. Make sure the bento is tasty.

Any bento I make has to taste so good that I'm drooling in anticipation of opening my box at lunchtime. (Sometimes I can't resist and have lunch early.) I never pack something just because it's supposed to be healthy. I also make sure that the food I put in tastes good even when cold or at room temperature. Sometimes I carry along an ice pack, but they do add extra weight, so most of my bentos are meant to be eaten at room temperature.

4. Make the bento, fun, colorful and attractive, but don't fuss too much.

We eat with our eyes as well as our mouths and stomachs. A bento box should look colorful and appetizing. I keep elaborate, time-consuming bento decoration attempts for special occasions.

I have a general rule of keeping bento decorating time — the time needed for the addition of things like cutely cut vegetables or decorated rice balls — to a maximum of ten minutes per bento for everyday bentos. Usually it takes me no more than five minutes to add a fun, decorative element.

I think that it would be helpful if bento bloggers who post elaborate charaben photos could include the time it took them to make their amazing creations on occasion. I'm pretty sure it takes them longer than the 20 to 30 minutes maximum I allow myself in the mornings (it rarely goes over 20 minutes for one bento, or 25 for two.) I am not an experienced charaben maker by any means, but I'm a pretty experienced bento maker and cook, and for me whenever I try to make a very decorative bento it takes me ages. There's a joy in creating something beautiful, even if it's going to be eaten up in a few hours, but to my mind charabens are more akin to crafts rather than everyday cooking, sort of like creating colorfully decorated cupcakes.

Also keep in mind that a well-balanced, colorful bento can be beautiful on its own without any additional frills.

5. Use seasonal, locally grown, natural ingredients whenever possible.

I try to make use of seasonal produce as much as possible. I also try to stay away from pre-made, processed foods. Most of my bentos are made with fresh, natural ingredients - organic and untreated fruits and vegetables, ethically raised meat and poultry, and so on. When I do use processed foods such as canned beans or processed meats, I try to stick to ones that have a minimum of additives.

6. Pay attention to safety and hygiene.

When packing food that may have to sit at room temperature for some time before being eaten, it's crucial to follow proper, safe, bento-packing practices. Try to handle the food with your bare hands as little as possible - use chopsticks and other utensils to arrange your food, or consider using those disposable gloves that commercial food preparers use. Don't lick your fingers while you're arranging your cute little bento-scapes! In warm weather or for food that might spoil easily, be sure to use an ice pack.

7. Plan ahead.

The biggest time waster in the morning is peering through the refrigerator and the cupboards, wondering what to make! I try to spend a few minutes every week planning out my bentos. I may not stick to the plan all the time, but it's so helpful to have some idea of what to pack beforehand. My Weekly Bento Planner and Weekly Meal Planner forms may help.

8. Stock up on homemade and store-bought staples.

Staples are items that have been fully or half-cooked in advance and that can be packed into a bento box with little or no additional cooking. I try to keep at least a few such items stocked in my freezer, refrigerator, or pantry. Most of my bento staples are homemade—I usually make them when I'm cooking dinner, or when I have some time on the weekends. I have a stock of store bought staples too. See Johbisai: Building Up a Bento Stash.

9. Keep costs down.

Bringing a bento from home saves a lot of money over buying lunch from a fast food place or eating out. It's also a great way of using up leftovers which otherwise might go to waste. To help me save even more money, I try to stick to economical cuts of meat and fish, and vegetables that are in season. See also: Bento making: Variety and saving money.

10. Don't try to replicate Japanese bentos made in Japan, at least not all the time.

I love Japanese cuisine above all other cuisines—after all I am Japanese! I don’t try to replicate Japanese bentos that are made in Japan to the letter, however. While the increasing popularity of Japanese food worldwide has meant that staple ingredients such as soy sauce and miso are getting much easier - and economical - to buy, many fresh ingredients that are taken for granted in Japan are hard or impossible to get outside of regions with large Japanese expatriate or immigrant populations. And if you can get hold of them, they may be too expensive for the average household budget.

For my everyday bentos, I alternate traditional, authentic tasting Japanese-style bentos that have been adapted to use ingredients that are widely available, with bentos that combine various non-Japanese dishes and flavors. That's exactly what I feature on this site.

A couple of rules that didn't make the top 10

These rules are more personal rules of mine. They may or may not apply to you.

• I try to make vegetarian or vegan bentos more than half the time. It just makes me feel healthier. (Recently though, I've been exploring low-carb bento options. More about that in future posts.)
• Since I don't and can't spend a lot of time decorating my bento contents, I've allowed myself...yes, it's an excuse...to express myself by my selection of bento boxes and accessories. What that means in plain language is I now have a huge collection of bento boxes and accessories ^_^;. You have only seen a fraction of them on this site so far! In any case, being creative with boxes and accessories is a whole lot of fun, and takes very little time. And overall, I think I'm still saving money over buying lunch all the time. (Of course, you do not need a huge selection of boxes and such make bento meals part of your life. When I started bento-ing again as an adult about 6 years ago, I just had a box that my mother had sent me, plus a couple of plastic food containers, and I used those for more than a year. Maintaining this site has probably fueled my bento-box addiction...)

In conclusion

I believe a homemade bento lunch is appealing because it is a healthy, attractive, and delicious meal, made with care and attention, that is compact enough to carry easily to work or school. These are the factors that make a bento a bento . A bento doesn't have to be a work of art using only Japanese recipes, nor should it be simply a thrown-together meal in a plastic container. This is the philosophy that underpins all the recipes, tips and ideas on this site, as well as in my book.

Feel free to chime in with your rules, or tell me if you disagree with anything!

This is Tip no. 3 of Back To School Week. I hope you've enjoyed them and found them useful!

There seems to be a common misconception that one needs to go out and purchase a purpose-made lunch box or a bento box from Japan, in order to start making bento box lunches at all. While I do like cute bento goods and boxes, they are certainly not required, or even needed. I think for most people, they would like bento making should be a daily habit, not a time consuming hobby.

Actually any container that meet the following requirements will work work fine. You may already have a suitable container in your kitchen. You could be bringing lunch to work tomorrow!

The requirements for a bento box

• The container should be as leakproof as possible.
  This is quite important since you don't want the inside of your carrier bag, whatever it is, to get stained by leaking liquids. Many bento boxes from Japan have leak-resistant rubber seals. For any container you use, do a leak-test by filling it with water and shaking it around a bit. If any moisture leaks out easily, you probably want to try another box. (There are ways of adding leak protection to your box, such as putting it in a waterproof bag or securing it with a wide * rubber band, as well as making the food itself not so leaky.)

• The container should be easy to wash and take care of.
  This may sound like a no-brainer, but you should consider this especially if you want to use a bento box ordered from Japan. Most Japanese bento boxes are not dishwasher safe, so if you think you won't remember to (or don't want to) handwash your bento box, you will want to make sure you get a dishwasher safe container.

• The container should be microwave safe if you intend to nuke it.
  If you work in office and have access to a microwave oven, you may want to heat up your lunch in it. Most Japanese bento boxes are not microwave safe, since the typical Japanese bento is meant to be eaten at room temperature. So be sure your container is nuke-ready if you want to heat it up.

• The container should be the right size for your dietary needs. This is especially important if you are watching your calories to any extent. Generally speaking, for a tightly packed Japanese-style bento, the number of milliliters (ml) that a box can hold corresponds roughly to the number of calories it holds. This is why so many Japanese bento boxes, in particular the cute ones with anime characters and things on them, are tiny - they're meant to be used by kids and young girls on perpetual diets.

To determine the capacity of your intended box: Fill it to the top with water, then pour off the water into a measuring cup that can measure in milliliters.

See also: How to see if a bento box is the right size for you before buying.

Insulated and compartmentalized boxes

Some people don't like the individual items in their bento boxes to be rubbing against each other. If that sounds like you, then you will need a compartmentalized lunch box, such as the ones offered by Laptop Lunches. Personally I would rather have the compactness of a non-compartmentalized box, supplemented when needed with a separate container for something like fruit.

Insulated bento containers such as the Mr. Bento keep your food hot (or cold). Again, this is a personal preference but I am not a big fan of these. For one thing they are bulky and a bit of a bother to take care of. For another, the fact that the food is kept hot for several hours means that it's being held in steam table like conditions, rather like at a buffet. This means that while some foods like stews will taste great, others may not. They are nice to have for a chance of pace though. The capacity of the Mr. Bento is quite big, which can be a concern if you're trying to watch calories.

What I use

(Note: my collection of bento boxes has grown considerably since I wrote this originally back in 2007, and I have new favorites now. One of these days I'll get around to photographing them perhaps. In any case, the general principles written here still apply.)

I have several bento boxes in my stash, from one shaped like Hello Kitty's head to a beautiful lacquered box which I keep for special dinners at home. But I mainly use these practical containers for everyday lunch.

The box I use most of the time is not a bento box at all - it's a plastic lunch box I got from the supermarket. (For Swiss residents, it's available at Migros.) It has an attached flip-top lid that is fairly leak resistant, and came with a detachable bottom section that holds a cold pack. I rarely use this bottom section but it's nice to have. It's dishwasher and microwave safe, though I hand wash it most of the time. The plain white plastic body is very easy to keep clean and stain-free, which is a big plus. Finally, the capacity is about 600 ml, so it's great for my goal of keeping my lunch calories at or under 600. It's also rather comforting to know that if it gets damaged or something, I can easily replace it.

Sometimes I use this two-section bento box from Japan, a type that is widely available from bento box sellers such as Jlist. The main advantage of this box is that you can keep ingredients totally separate, so it's good if you have a very strong flavored item that you want to keep apart from other things. The inner rubberized lid is quite tight fitting, reducing the risk of leakage. It's also taller rather than wider, so it fits well in a bag. The empty containers can be stored nested within each other compactly.

The main disadvantage of this type of box is that it's not not microwave or dishwasher safe. I also find the multiple parts a bit of a bother to wash up compared to my main white plastic box. (Yes I'm a bit lazy.)

This is the main 'man-size' bento box that I use to make Max's bentos. It's a plastic storage container from the Ikea 365+ line. It has a microwave vent in the lid which makes it great for bentos that taste better warm, though the vent does have a tendency to leak a bit if the box is carried upside down or something. The capacity is about 900 ml.

The other one I use is a sleek black bento box from Japan that's officially designated as being 'man-size'. It comes with an integrated chopstick container in the lid, and a divider to separate rice from other ingredients inside. The capacity is around 850 ml. As you can see it's quite understated, though it has a head-scratching Engrish phrase on it ("impressive. My heart cannot stop throbbing. My dream that has begun to move.").

I hope this gives you some ideas as to what kind of bento box to use!

See also

• The bento boxes category
• Bento Item Spotlight category, where I discuss specific bento boxes and lunch boxes.
• Essential bento making supplies

This is a list of kitchen equipment that I find useful in prepping my bento lunches as fast and as efficiently as possible. This is not about bento accessories such as cute picks and sauce bottles, which are nice to have but not essential.

For information about how to select a bento box that's right for you, see Selecting the right bento lunch box.

Basic cooking equipment

• Two small non-stick frying pans
• One large (28cm diameter or about 11 inches) non-stick frying pan
• One or two small to mid-size saucepans

I use the small frying pans for quick frying, sautéing, and more. I use the large frying pan for boiling and steaming tasks as well as sautéing.

• An electric water kettle

How many minutes do you waste waiting for a pot of water to come to a boil? An electric water kettle does this essential task in the shortest time possible. One of the first things I do when making bento in the morning is to fill up my electric kettle and switch it on. If you are in the market for one, get the largest capacity model you can find.

• A cast iron grill pan

A grill pan is one of the best ways to quickly cook a piece of fish or meat, but it can be used for vegetables, tofu and more too. (I actually use a Le Creuset grill pan, which is enamel coated on the outside and uncoated on the inside.)

• Salad spinner

Use a salad spinner to wash all the leafy vegetables you get and try to get into the habit of washing them as soon as you get them home. If you can't manage that, at least try to wash them the night before you need them.

• Rice cooker with timer function

A rice cooker is the best tool for cooking white rice. The 'set-it-and-forget-it' convenience of a rice cooker with a timer function just can't be beat. Many modern rice cookers can handle brown rice as well as white rice, and can cook other kinds of whole grains as well. People even make soups and breads in a rice cooker! See Answering some rice cooker questions for more.

• Pressure cooker

If you are a vegan or vegetarian, or interested in introducing more whole grains and pulses (dried beans and legumes) to your diet, a pressure cooker is a must. A pressure cooker is great for brown rice, whole grains that need longer cooking (like barley), and dried beans. Dried beans are so much cheaper and better tasting than canned, and cook up in a short time in a pressure cooker. I often make a batch of beans, portion them and freeze them. See Pressure Cooker Love.

The rest of the items should be self-explanatory.

• Plastic zip bags
• Bowls and plates for laying out ingredients
• Sharp knives (a general purpose chopping knife and a small peeling knife)
• Microwave safe plastic wrap (saran wrap)
• Sealable, freezer safe glass or plastic containers for storing bits and pieces of food

Three tools that make cutting tasks easier

• Vegetable peeler
• Vegetable slicer or mandoline. I use a cheap "cassette" type from Japan, rather than my big, scary French mandoline, especially in the morning when I'm not too sharp but the mandoline blade is.

• A Microplane grater. I use this when I need to grate something because it's dead easy to clean up. It's the perfect tool for finely grating ginger, or zest, or something (not that I grate zest that much when I'm making bento.)
• Food processor - if you're in the market for a new one, try to get one that has a small 'baby food' bowl in addition to the regular big bowl. You'll use the small bowl a lot more for small chopping tasks.

For packing bento boxes:

• Long chopsticks (saibashi)

Saibashi are long, uncoated chopsticks (usually made of bamboo) meant for cooking. Often they are attached together with a string, which I just cut off. They are great for mixing things up, stir-frying, and so on, as well as for putting food in the bento box. 2 or 3 pairs (or 4 to 6 individual) saibashi held together act sort of like a whisk for rapidly stirring things, but are much easier to clean. Regular chopsticks will do fine too, though be careful not to use the lacquered kind in hot pans.

And finally, a couple of larger appliances that are nice to have:

• microwave oven
• toaster oven - A conventional oven takes far long to heat up, but a toaster oven is up in a jiffy.

Cute bento accessories are nice to have, but not essential

Essential bento making equipment to me is not about cute little egg formers or colorful plastic picks. It's about tools that make bento assembly fast and easy. Using egg formers and the like is optional, not mandatory. There are several reviews of bento boxes and accessories on this site however - see the equipment and supplies category, as well as the kyaraben category for decorative bento supplies and ideas.

Note: This bento safety article is one of the first ones I posted here on Just Bento, back in November 2007. I've edited it and added some more information, especially since more and more new people are coming to the site. Even if you're a veteran bento maker, it's good to go over the basics occasionally!

A traditional portable bento box meal is meant to be eaten eaten at room temperature. It's typically made in the morning, then held for a few hours until lunchtime, also at room temperature. Millions and millions of Japanese people eat bentos like this (as well as an increasing number of people all around the world). There are some basic, time-tested precautions to take to ensure that your bento box meals will be tasty and safe when you tuck into them.

Thoroughly re-heat then cool any cooked food before packing

Using leftover and pre-cooked food reduces the time needed to assemble your bento in the morning. But the longer food has been lying around, even in the refrigerator, it gets less fresh and edible. Re-heating cooked food helps to kill off any micro-organisms that may have started to grow.

The best way to re-heat things in my opinion is in a pan, rather than the microwave, because the surface is where the microorganisms are likely to have formed, and the high heat of a pan will kill those off immediately. This is particularly important with meat, fish and even vegetable proteins. Japanese bento books usually recommend this.

In some cases it can be okay to pack food direct from the refrigerator, such as pre-made salads, instant pickles, and so on. Do use common sense though; packing leftovers from the night before is usually okay, but leftovers from 3 days ago get iffy. When in the slightest doubt, heat it through and cool it down.

Don't use raw or undercooked fish or meat

You're probably not going to be carrying a steak tartare to work for lunch. But you might think about sushi. Don't. Raw fish is not safe unless it's eaten immediately. (I've seen a couple of French bento cookbooks that use raw-fish sushi. They made me shudder, thinking of the people who might get sick eating hours-old raw fish.) If you have leftover sushi from the night before, throw it out or cook the fish if you must. (Yes you might have been ok eating leftover sushi, but you were lucky.)

Sushi that uses cooked or preserved foods (egg, boiled shrimp, broiled eel (unagi), vegetables like kanpyou (dried gourd strips), pickles) is ok, though always use caution. Futomaki, the colorful big pinwheel sushi, usually only uses cooked items so is usually ok. There are also special sushi varieties that are meant to be long-keeping, such as saba zushi (marinated horse mackerel that is pressed onto a log of rice), but you rarely see these outside of Japan. Sushi rice itself keeps fairly well, due to the vinegar and salt that flavors it.

Meat that has been cooked on the surface (e.g. roast beef that's pink on the inside) is usually ok, but when in doubt pack such foods with an ice pack to keep them cool. Certain meats such as pork and chicken always need to be cooked through when used for bentos (and for other purposes too mostly.)

Avoid very moist or undercooked proteins in hot weather

Undercooked meat is not safe, and neither is undercooked or raw fish. But undercooked or moist protein of any kind should be avoided when the weather is hot. Plain tofu, for example, that hasn't been cooked through thoroughly, can be unsafe, and should be reserved for the cooler months. Or, use an icepack or other cooling device for safety. (Most tofu recipes on Just Bento will be totally cooked through, so are safe. For simple stir-fries and so on, I prefer using fried tofu over plain tofu because of the lower initial moisture content.)

Conversely, - and this may seem like common sense, but needs to be said - don't use tofu that is bad in the first place. I have tasted so much bad tofu at various restaurants, and even in people's homes. If the tofu smells or tastes sour or rotten or 'off' in any way, it should be tossed. To keep tofu that's been opened fresh, totally immerse in fresh water and seal completely. Change the water at least once a day.

Tamagoyaki, the slightly sweet Japanese omelette, is a bento staple. But to be really good it has to be slightly moist in the middle. So, be sure to use fresh eggs, and to cool it down completely before packing into the bento box. (I've been expermenting a bit with freezing sliced tamagoyaki recently; I'll report back soon with the results.)

Home made mayonnaise is delicious, but should be used with caution, in foods like tuna salad. Commercial mayo has all kinds of preservatives in it that we'd rather not think about, but do keep our tummies happy. (See freezing tuna salad.)

Keep cool foods separate from hot

Remember the McDLT? The gimmick with that burger was the two-part styrofoam container, with one side for the lettuce and tomato, and the other for the burger and bun. (Here's an old commercial for the McDLT featuring Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on Seinfeld.) There was logic behind this rather environmentally unfriendly packaging. Any foods that should be kept cool, such as raw fruits and vegetables, should be kept in a separate container from the cooked foods, even if the cooked foods have had a chance to cool down. This will keep veggies fresh and crisp.

Do you need an ice pack?

Unless an ice pack is specifically called for, all the complete bento lunch ideas as well as the individual component recipes are meant to be safe to eat without refrigeration, if the safety precautions on this page are followed.

In hot weather, it's safer to pack an ice pack with the cool food. One trick is to freeze a juice carton or a small plastic bottle filled with the beverage of your choice, and to freeze it. Pack that with your lunch box, and it acts as an ice pack and will have defrosted enough to drink by lunch time.

If you're carrying a bento meal that's meant to be consumed more than a few hours later -- e.g., a bento packed in the morning meant to be eaten in the evening for a night class -- use an ice pack to be on the safe side, or use the foods that keep food fresher longer listed below. (An umeboshi onigiri (rice ball) will even keep for a couple of days.)

Thermal lunch containers don't guarantee safety!

Some people assume that using a thermal lunch container such as Zojirushi's Mr. Bento will guarantee food safety. Don't fall into that trap! Do remember that a thermal lunch container maintains heat at a certain level for longer than a regular lunch or bento box. So, if you pack a lukewarm, moist lunch, your food will become a great cosy breeding ground for the nasties. Be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions for these thermal containers, and pack either piping hot or thoroughly cooled food in them.

Try to only use freshly cooked or frozen rice

Plain rice can actually go bad pretty fast, since it's so moist. It can also become inedible quite fast if it goes a bit dry and hard, especially in the desert-like atmosphere of a typical refrigerator. This is why a rice cooker with a timer function is a very useful thing to have.

If you do cook rice the day before, make sure it's wrapped up completely before storing in the refrigerator. If you want to keep rice longer, it's best to freeze it. You can carry the frozen rice as-is in a block (especially in hot weather), or heat it through completely in the microwave or by steaming, and cool down completely.

If you live in a very warm and humid climate, you may want to consider carrying rice in the form of sushi rice or as well-salted onigiri only in the summer - or with umeboshi (see below).

Certain foods that help keep things fresher

Traditionally, _umeboshi_ (pickled plum) has been used in bentos and as onigiri filling. The traditional hinomaru bento, a bento box filled with white rice sporting one, lone umeboshi in the middle, is a very good keeper. (Incidentally, the logo for Just Bento is inspired by the hinomaru bento.) Umeboshi may have antimicrobial qualities, as do (supposedly) shiso leaves.

Fresh, nontoxic green leaves used as dividers and wrappers are also supposed to have antibacterial qualities. These are not edible. The most popular one is fresh bamboo leaves. (Dried bamboo leaves are also used as as wrappers, but don't have the same antimicrobial qualties as fresh.) Banana leaves, used in South-East Asian cuisine, may have similar properties.

Wasabi and ginger may also help to keep things fresher. Try using wasabi to flavor vegetables (example: broccoli with wasabi sauce), or tucking some pickled ginger in the corner of your bento.

Salt is a time tested preserver, so the salt you put on the surface of onigiri is not just for flavor - it's to keep the rice fresher longer.

Sugar can also act as a preservative (think of jams and preserves), though you need to use it in some quantity.

Vinegar is also a preserver. Salty or vinegary foods keep longer than foods with little seasoning. Sushi rice keeps better than plain rice because of the vinegar, salt and sugar.

Anti-bacterial bento boxes and sheets

Some bento boxes, such as this one on the J-List/JBox site, have an anti-bacterial silver ion coating, which is supposed to keep your food safer for longer. You can also find antibacterial bento sheets designed to be placed on top of the food. However, using these products doesn't mean that you shouldn't follow the safety precautions listed on this page! Personally, I don't use these products (though I do have the bento box linked to, just because it's a big black one that's perfect for The Guy's bentos) because I have a feeling they just give a false sense of security.

Wash your used bento containers and implements completely

A no brainer perhaps. But don't try to re-use an unwashed bento box or Mr. Bento dish! Wash and dry everything thoroughly before you use them again. The same goes for any eating utensils, such as chopsticks, forks and spoons, and picks, and all the cooking implements you use to prepare your bento. As pointed out in the comments, don't forget to wash the gaskets and edges of the lids and so forth too.

Be careful of tasting while cooking

Did you know that you can contaminate food by tasting it? Example: if you dip a spoon into a pot of soup, taste from that spoon, then put the spoon back in to the pot, you've added whatever germs are in your mouth to the soup. This may not be a big deal if you're eating the food right away, but if you're going to be carrying it around for a few hours you want to be extra cautious. If you do need to taste while cooking, don't use the utensil you put into your mouth back into the food.

Don't forget about your hands either! Don't use your fingers to pick up food and put it in your mouth while you're making onigiri for example. And of course, you should wash your hands thoroughly before handling any food.

Try not to over-handle the food

If you are a budding cute bento or charaben artist, be careful of over-handling food that you are bringing for bento, especially in hot weather. Try to avoid using your hands as much as possible. If you need to practice your decorative bento skills, you may want to consider eating the results immediately. There's no rule that says rice shaped like Totoro has to be only be eaten for bento! Skilled charaben artists use chopsticks, toothpicks and tweezers to avoid over-handling the food.

Conclusion: Be safe, not sorry!

My aim is not to scare you off of making bento lunches by any means. But it's better to take just a few commonsense precautions. Bentos should make you healthier, not sick!

From the archives: This is a foundation post for anyone interested in Japanese style bentos based around rice. Edited and updated to reflect some safety related questions. Be sure to read the linked bento safety posts too. Originally posted in October 2007.

Rice is the base carbohydrate for most Japanese style bento lunches, but the idea of cooking rice fresh every day may be rather daunting. If you have a rice cooker with a timer that can be set so that the rice is ready when you want to make your bento it is easier (and recommended if you make bentos daily). Of course this does mean that you need to rinse the rice the night before.

While I prefer to wash the rice the night before and set the timer on my rice cooker, I often freeze pre-portioned packets of rice to use on extra busy mornings. Rice freezes very well if you make sure that it's still warm when you wrap up the portions. This retains the necessary moisture inside the plastic. It's also a good idea to use sturdy, microwaveable wrap such as Saran Wrap.

I pre-portion the brown rice that I cook 5 cups at a time in a pressure cooker into 1 cup and 1/2 cup portions, using scoop-style cup measures. (I usually do this during the weekend.) After wrapping in the plastic wrap (cling film), I leave them until they have cooled down, then then double-bag them in zip bags and put them in the freezer. (For the environmentally conscious, the zip bags can be reused several times provided you don't puncture them.) This amount lasts the two of us 2 to 3 weeks. To prepare a bento box, I use a 1 cup portion for myself and 2 cups or 1 1/2 cups for the bigger guy, re-heated in the microwave before stuffing into the box. Pre-portioning rice like this really helps to control portion sizes; when you're in a hurry in the morning and scooping hot rice out of a cooker, portioning into a cup becomes a hassle.

You may choose to bring the frozen packet as-is, especially if you have a microwave at work. I prefer to re-heat the rice in the morning because I often find that the frozen packet is ice cold at lunchtime, which isn't very pleasant.

If you do re-heat the frozen rice in the morning, be sure to cool it down again before closing up your bento box. Warm rice leads to condensation. Condensation within a closed bento box is the main cause of spoilage. I usually pack the rice in my bento box first, then leave the box open to cool down while I prep the rest of the contents.

If you want to be extra safe, pack the bento box with a small ice pack, and/or put a single umeboshi (salted pickled plum) in the middle of the rice. The umeboshi in rice is the traditional way of keeping rice fresh. Umeboshi are available at any Japanese grocery store. (You don't have to eat the umeboshi if you don't like it - just throw it away.) See also: Keeping your bento lunch safe.

A word about different kinds of rice

The shorter the grain, the moister the rice is and the better it seems to freeze and recover from freezing. So Japanese style 'sushi' rice or medium grain rice, round glutionous rice, other medium grain rices like arborio, vialone and 'pudding' rice, freeze well. On the other hand long grain rices such as jasmine rice, Carolina rice and basmati rice tend to get hard and dry. If this happens to your frozen rice, you can make it more edible by turning it into fried rice. See also: Looking at rice.

Freezing onigiri

Pre-made onigiri (rice balls), without the nori wrapping, can be frozen successfuly using the guidelines above. Just wrap each warm onigiri securely in plastic wrap and freeze. If you use the cling film method of making onigiri, you can use that to wrap up the onigiri as soon as you make it. Don't freeze rice balls that have been wrapped in nori seaweed though, unless you like soggy nori!

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.

Most regular Japanese bentos have quite a lot of rice in them - typically, at least 2 cups, compressed tightly to make room for the rest of the food (the okazu). 1 cup of medium grain brown rice (240ml, or 1 U.S. cup measure; around 7 oz or 190-200g in weight) is around 220 calories, so if you stuff in the rice following the norm, that's quite a lot of calories. This is why I like to pre-portion the rice (by freezing or not) and limit myself to 1 cup per bento. (For my bigger spouse, I put in 1 1/2 to 2 cups, depending on what else is in the bento.)

Another factor to consider is that since typical Japanese bentos have so much plain rice in them, the okazu (the other food) tends to be quite salty. If you have less rice, you will not want as much saltiness because you don't need it to make the rice "go". (There's even a common phrase for this to indicate if something is tasty to have with rice - gohan ga susumu). I try to keep the salt content down in the bentos I post here. Another tactic I use is to add vegetables that are barely seasoned, such as the plain boiled green beans and carrots in Bento no. 1.

Watch out for the saltiness in things like prepared pickles and furikake powder too.

[Edited to add:]

There is a small caloric difference between different types of rice. And as a commenter pointed out, I forgot to mention that by 'cup' I mean 1 U.S. cup, or 240ml. (For the sake of simplicity I just remember the numbers for brown rice, which is a bit more caloric than other types of rice. Overestimating a bit doesn't hurt!)

Caloric values of one U.S. cup (240ml) or 100g of rice (source: CalorieKing)

• Medium grain brown rice (the kind that I use the most): 1 cup = 218 cal; 100g = 112 cal
• Medium grain white rice: 1 cup = 242 cal; 100g = 130 cal
• Long grain white rice: 1 cup = 205 cal; 100g = 130cal
• Sticky white rice: 1 cup = 169 cal; 100g = 97 cal

See also

• Skinny bento vs. not-skinny bento

Bento contents, 2-tier bento (580ml capacity):

• 1 cup (1 cup=220ml) white rice, 240 cal
• 1 small piece salted salmon, 50 cal
• 1-egg tamagoyaki, 100 cal
• Approx. 1/2 cup sweet pepper and onion confit, 40 calories
• Blanched broccoli flowerets, 10 cal
• Blanched snow peas (mangetout) 5 cal
• Yukari (furikake made from umeboshi and red shiso leaves)

Total calories (approx): 445 (how calories are calculated)

Bento contents, 1-tier bento (670ml capacity):

• 1 cup (1 cup=220ml) white rice, 240 cal
• 2 small pieces salted salmon, 100 cal
• 1-egg tamagoyaki, 100 cal
• Approx. 3/4 cup sweet pepper and onion confit, 60 calories
• Blanched broccoli flowerets, 10 cal
• Blanched snow peas (mangetout) 5 cal
• Yukari (furikake made from umeboshi and red shiso leaves)

Total calories (approx): 515 (how calories are calculated)

Time needed for both: 10-20 minutes in the morning (depending on your assembly speed and neatness factor)

Type: Japanese, omnivore (salmon, egg)

This is a fairly standard, classic Japanese style bento. I make this type of bento far more than any other. I've already given instructions on how to make the individual pieces, but I thought it might be useful to see step-by-step how to pack a bento box properly, with an eye to the following:

• Presentation and attractiveness
• Calorie content
• Speed and ease

I've used two standard type bento boxes; a 2-tier model, and a 1-tier model with a divider.

How to fill a 2-tier bento box

2-tier bento boxes are the most popular type according to a recent poll of Just Bento readers, and they are the type most commonly available from bento box suppliers, at least outside of Japan. They are a bit easier to pack than 1-tier boxes, and fit together in a nice compact way for easy portability. Here I've used a 2-tier blue Lube Sheep box, with capacity of 580ml for both compartments.

Here are the components that will go into the bento box, besides the rice. (Note I usually don't take the time to lay them out on a plate like this! This is just for show.) As you can see, there's a nice balance of colors there from greens to reds to yellows. The confit was made a couple of days before and stocked in the fridge, and the salmon was precooked and stocked in the freezer. (You can pack it frozen if you like, and it will defrost by lunchtime). The broccoli and snow peas cooked together in a small pan of salted water, and the 1-egg tamagoyaki only took a couple of minutes to cook.

Always start packing a bento box with the rice. I've put the rice in the smaller compartment, since I'm watching my calories (normally in Japan the larger compartment is used for rice). I like to make it look neat, so I lightly flatten it out with a moistened spoon. You could also use your fingers for this.

I pack the pepper and onion confit in one corner of the other compartment. I use a silicone cupcake liner here just to keep it neat, though it's not totally necessary.

Next, I pack the protein elements: the small salmon piece and the tamagoyaki. They are cut to fit in the compartment more or less neatly.

I fill the gaps left with broccoli florets, as tightly as I can. By packing a bento box tightly, you prevent things from shifting around during transit. The less things move around, the more attractive the bento contents will be when the box is opened at lunchtime.

To finish up, I tuck in the snow peas (mangetout) which are cut on the diagonal wherever there is a little gap. I put a couple of slices on top of the rice, and sprinkle a little yukari (a furikake made from dried umeboshi and red shiso leaves) for added color. This is not necessary, but it does perk up the bento box just that little bit, and takes only seconds.

How to fill a 1-tier bento box

A one tier bento box is more of an open canvas than a two-tier, but the principles are the same. Here I've used a 670 ml capacity stainless steel bento box from Kobo Aizawa.

Again, start with the rice. I use the divider to squeeze the rice to one side to compact it, and flatten out the top with a moistened spoon. There's 1 cup on rice. (By the way, yes it is white rice, the least healthy kind...but I just got another shipment from Japan of really great tasting rice, so I'm indulging myself here!)

This time, I pack in a bit more of the pepper and onion confit - about 3/4 to 1 cup's worth. It's pushed tightly to one side.

Next are the protein elements. I've put the salmon in a divider, but this isn't necessary. It does show how flexible silicon liners are - far more versatile than rigid plastic divider cups.

Then I fill the gaps as tightly as possible with the broccoli, followed by the snow peas and the final decorative touch of the yukari.

It took me about 5 minutes per box to pack them, and I think they look pretty nice and colorful.

Packed tight, but with less calories

You may notice that although the capacity in ml. of the 2-tier bento box is 580ml, the calories I've packed in are only 445. And the capacity of the one-tier box is 670ml but the calories therein are just over 500. This goes against the conventional wisdom that the capacity of your bento box equals the number of calories you expect to pack in there (see Selecting the right bento box.) That's because I packed in less rice than is normally put in (a standard adult-size bento box in Japan has 1 1/2 to 2 cups of rice), used relatively low-fat proteins (no fried chicken and such) More about packing lower-energy bento boxes in Skinny bento vs. not skinny bento.

Handy gap fillers

As I have shown, the more tightly you can pack your bento, the less things will shift around, and the more attractive and appetising the bento will appear when it's opened at lunchtime. I try to use vegetable-based items as gap fillers whenever possible. Here are some good gap fillers:

• Anything I have premade and stocked, like carrot kinpira. See the Side dishes and space fillers section for more ideas.
• Plain boiled or blanched broccoli, broccoli rabe or cauliflower florets
• Blanched snow peas, green beans
• Cherry or grape tomatoes
• Parsley leaves
• Bright green lettuce leaves (though don't use them around warm food or they go limp and soggy)
• Small pieces of pickled vegetables (but watch out for the salt content)
• Shredded cabbage
• Firm grapes, if you don't mind mixing savory and sweet

If you choose your gap fillers with an eye towards color as well as flavor and nutrition, you'll end up with a first class bento box!

In my brief absence (I was trotting through parts of Japan, doing serious bento research - honest! ^_^;) I've noticed quite a lot of new visitors to the site again. A lot of them are coming from this post on the New York Times Diner's Journal blog by Samatha Storey, who wrote an article last year which helped to bring homemade bentos to the attention of a lot of people. There are also people coming from various forum threads, such as this one on Ravelry.

I could point all the new visitors and potential bento fans to various Getting Started articles here as I periodically do, but I've already done that over on the left sidebar (points over there). So instead, I thought I'd turn the microphone over as it were, to all the current JustBento readers and bento veterans. Tell the new people, why do you make bentos? What articles on JustBento do you find particularly useful? Which recipes do you like? What other useful bento sites are out there (self-linking allowed)? Help to evangelize the cult of bento! ^_^ Also, please let them/us know who you are (e.g. graduate student, full time mom, athlete, lawyer, etc), where you're from (town/state/country etc) and general age, just so people know what kinds of people make bentos. (I know we've had posts like this before, but I plan to keep this at the top where new visitors can find it easily.)

For myself, I think the one post I'd point to to read first might be my Top 10 Bento Rules. And then the Bento Basics section and our friendly forum!

I was re-reading novel that used to be a favorite guilty pleasure* the other day. One minor scene in the book recounting the childhood of one of the main protagonists describes her lunch routine when she was a little girl. She would always share a lunch with her mother at her workplace. The emphasis is mine:

There was always something hot, nourishing, and delicious in [her mother's] covered basket for them to share. Many of the other workers also brought their lunches from home...

I'm sure I didn't even notice that passage when I read the book originally, but now that I am hyper-attuned to anything related to bringing lunch from home, I found the "hot, nourishing and delicious" part intriguing. First of all, presumably the mother brought the lunch from home in the morning. The time period was the 1950s, so there were no microwave ovens. So how did the mother manage to make the lunch brought in a covered basket hot? Actually I'm sure that the author did not even think this through when she wrote it; she was great at detail in most of her books, but I think she was a lot more interested in things like fashion and sex than food. She probably threw in the phrase "hot, nourishing and delicious" to convey a feeling of a mother's love for her little daughter.

In many cultures, hot food is associated with those terms 'nourishing and delicious', even if the food we actually put in our mouths is not piping hot most of the time. And this insistence on hot food is a psychological barrier for quite a few people regarding bento meals and the fact that they are mainly meant to be eaten cold/at room temperature, judging from the comments and emails I've gotten over the years. Quite a few people cannot even conceive of eating a 'cold' lunch; to them giving a 'cold' lunch to kids seems positively cruel. The comments to my Quora reply about heating up bento boxes are pretty typical.

To my mind, only a few foods have to be eaten piping hot: soups and stews and curries, hot cooked porridges, hot tea or coffee, bao or steamed buns. Many foods are a lot better when they are hot or at least warm, such as the spring rolls (harumaki) I posted a recipe for last week - on JustHungry, not JustBento, as you may have noticed. But there are plenty of foods that are delicious, even better, at room temperature - and that's what most homemade bentos are composed of. (Some, though not all, cheap storebought bentos in Japan are meant to be heated up a bit in the microwave before eating, although they can usually be eaten without heating up too.)

Some Japanese people do like to reheat their bentos - the most frequent complaint is against cold rice - so if they have access to a microwave, they'll heat up their food there. Some kindergartens have bento heating facilities, where metal bento boxes and be put in en masse and steam-heated. And of course there are thermal lunch jars and bento boxes. But as I've stated on these pages before, most bentos are eaten without reheating - and no, it's not weird at all. I think the prejudice against 'cold' food is a cultural and psychological one in the main. Is hot food always more nourishing for you than cold? Are hot Tater Tots** better for a child than a 'cold' pasta salad brought from home with lots of vegetables and protein? Obviously not if you think it through, but it's hard to shake those deeply ingrained beliefs.

So if you've been resisting the idea of packing a bento lunch because of the heat issue, try this: make a list of at least 5 foods that you love, that don't have to be piping hot or even warm to enjoy. Now imagine packing those foods in a portable container. You''ve taken the first steps towards incorporating bentos in your routine! Then, try the recipes on this site, 99% of are meant to be tasty at room temperature. (For anything that needs to be refrigerator-cold or hot, I say so clearly and suggest appropriate measures, such as using a thermal lunch jar.)

[* In case you're interested, that old guilty-pleasure book is Scruples by Judith Krantz. I found it hidden in the drawer of the bedroom was assigned to in the house my parents rented in Port Washington, Long Island, for a month while they were house hunting, after we moved back to the U.S. from Japan. I think the bedroom belonged to a teenaged girl, and the book was dog-eared at all the naughty bits. For 16-year old me, it was quite a revelation. I must have re-read that book 10 times in that month...and it may even have helped to brush up my rusty English. ^^]

[** I love Tater Tots, in moderation.]

It's that time of year again! Today is December 30th, and this year New Year's Eve and New Year's Day take place conveniently (or not, depending on your perspective) take place over the weekend. You can give yourself up totally to partying or whatever you usually do on those days, and start the New Year on a day when most of us kick off a new week anyway.

Since I like to get a headstart on a brand new year, I always start thinking about the things I want to accomplish during the year in the waning days of the old one. I made a few resolutions for 2011 at the end of last year, and well...I didn't get to do a whole lot of them. My year was dominated by three things: the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, my continuous health problems, and late in the year my sudden though not totally unexpected father's passing. The first event totally changed my plans for my spring trip to Japan; instead of doing things normal, fun things like the long ekiben - eating train voyage around the country I was originally intending, I spent a lot of time talking to people about the aftermath of that terrible event (you can see some of the related articles on Just Hungry, as well as on the Japan Times, BlogHer and so on). And once I got back home in June, my health problems started to take over, and I got the "C" diagnosis. And just when I thought the worst was over, literally as soon as I got home after my hysterectomy surgery, I got the news that my father had died.

2011 was "my" year in a way, as I explained last year - it was the Year of the Rabbit, and I am a toshi-onna (a woman born in the year of that particular animal sign). There is a superstition that good things tend not to happen in "your" year, and I guess that was kind of the case for me this year! What a bummer. But maybe 2012, the Year of the Dragon, will bring new energy and better karma.

But anyway, back to bentos and resolutions! For 2012 my top priority is getting my body healthy again. And you can be sure that bentos will play a big part in that. I never really thought that I ate unhealthily on a regular basis - I rarely go out to eat a fast-food places and such, and most of our meals are cooked at home. But I can do a lot better, for myself and for The Guy. When you get seriously sick, you really realize just how important, and how fragile, the state of your body is for simple day to day happiness. So more than ever, the bentos around here will have a health focus - with plenty of fun thrown in too of course!

The one great thing that happened this year to me was the success of The Just Bento Cookbook. I thought it might do well, given all the wonderful people (that's you!) who support this site so enthusiastically, but I didn't anticipate it doing so well that it's gone to 5 printings in just one year, despite being out of print briefly due to some shuffling of publishing companies and such. And now I'm thinking out loud, but...is there anything I didn't manage to cover in that book bento-wise, that needs to be? Hmm...we'll see. ^_^

So what about you? Are you already thinking ahead to 2012 too? Please share your resolutions, bento related or not! And let's ring out this year in grace and style.

On Saturday, I had my first book signing event at Kinokuniya in New York. (See what's coming up this week, especially if you're in Seattle!) I was quite nervous since I've never done a book signing before, but I think it went pretty well. ^_^; I'll have more photos up somewhere as soon as I've processed them, but here's just one. I'm the black blob in the right bottom corner!

After I stumbled my way through a short introduction of the "what is bento" subject, with a bit of show-and-tell of various bento boxes, we had a Q & A session. One of the questions asked was, what's the difference between a regular lunch box a bento box? I had to think a bit about my answer. Essentially there is no difference between a box you pack for lunch, and a bento box, since basically a bento (for lunch) is Japanese for a lunch box!

I guess the main reason why I, and many other people, talk in terms of bento rather than lunch box is that the term 'bento' carries with it a whole lot of tradition and useful ideas from which to draw from. Things such as:

• having a variety of textures, flavors, food groups and colors inside a small container
• packing things tightly for compactness and to ensure that things don't move around
• how to pack a box so that it looks appetizing when it's opened
• what types of food to pack, what shouldn't be packed, how far in advance to make things
• what tastes good several hours after packing, and (mostly) at room temperature
• and last but not least, how to keep up with making bentos day after day, for yourself, your kids, your spouse or anyone else.

A sandwich is fine for lunch, and in Japan a sandwich bento is still a bento. I love sandwiches, but a sandwich every day gets monotonous. I love salad for lunch too, but a bunch of salad just dumped into a container, bumped around for a while in a backpack, can look a bit iffy. So, I turn to the Book of Bento. I don't mean The Just Bento Cookbook necessarily; I'm referring to the the knowledge that I've accumulated, from my mom, my grandmothers, my aunts, my sister-with-two-kids, other bento cookbooks and blogs and web sites, and more.

It may sound corny, but to me a bento box is about giving a bit of love to someone too. That someone can be you, though having someone else make you a bento is that much more special. (I still love it when my mom makes a bento for me, when I'm back in Japan.)

Here's a Japanese video - actually a commercial for Tokyo Gas (a utility company) - which explains the role of homemade bentos in Japanese life so well, as well as showing some pretty typical homemade bentos. (I love the "Sorry! I overslept! one at 0:26.) The mother narrating the story is reminiscing about how she kept on making bentos for her mostly unresponsive, moody teenage son through 3 years of high school. She thought of them rather like one-way letters or emails to her son; she never got a verbal reply, until the very end, but the box that came back empty every day was reply enough for her. And in the last empty bento box, her son encloses a note, saying "Thanks....sorry I could never say that before". (I always tear up at that part....)

(I love these sentimental food-and-family-love commercials from Tokyo Gas. This fried rice post over on Just Hungry has another one.)

In sum, I guess it's all about treating your lunch with a bit of tender love, and injecting it with some fun and variety. (And you know, you can call it a lunch box instead of a bento too! It's all about the substance really.)

Anyway, thank you to the lady who asked that question (sorry I didn't get your name), for making me think! I wish I could have been this articulate on the spot. ^_^;

Happy New Year everyone!

The start of a brand new year is the time for resolutions of course, and many of you reading this may have made bentos part of your plans for 2013. So, if you have any questions or comments about bento-ing - anything at all - this is an open thread post for you to pose them. If you are brand new to bento making, don't be shy and ask anything you like - I know that going through the hundreds of articles here on JustBento can be a bit intimidating. On the other hand, if you're a bento veteran you may want to let the newbies know what about bento making has worked, and what hasn't, for you. And whatever your level of bento-making expertise, if you like let us know what your goals for 2013 are. I'll be answering the most frequently asked and/or interesting questions together in future posts. (Note: I'll be reading your comments on Facebook too but it's best to post your comment here on the site, right below.)

Here's to a great bento 2013!

Reader Suzi no miko left this great comment:

I am a vegetarian and my husband is not (slight issue…). When I make Bento for the two of us I end up making a bunch of different things because he wants meat in his Bento almost every day. He’s also on the South Beach Diet thing and won’t eat rice, carrots, corn, potatoes, soba, fruit, etc… This page had been very helpful to us (more specifically me) and thanks to our bento boxes making portion control easy and the tips on packing from you we have collectively lost about 50 pounds.

That is really great - congratulations to Suzu no miko and her husband! Bentos are a great weight loss aid, as I've written before, because portion control is much easier than with large or more open containers.

One point that Suzu no miko brought up is something I have to deal with too: how to make a vegetarian-based bento that an omnivore, or a bigger eater, would feel satisfied with. I often show the bigger-portion version of each complete bento, but here are some general tips:

• Start off with a vegetarian bento, if that's what you want. There's no need for you to compromise.
• When cooking for two, if you are the smaller one (or the one who wants to lose weight!), take 1/3rd of the whole for yourself and the rest for the bigger eater, instead of simply dividing in half.
• Stock up on meat that's cut small. E.g. thinly cut beef or pork, bite size chicken. Ground meat (pork, beef, chicken, turkey) is also handy to have on hand. If you are making a stir fry for instance, after the vegetables have cooked and you've taken out your own veggie-only portion, you can add some thiny sliced beef bits (perhaps marinating them first in a little soy sauce and mirin) which cooks up in a minute or two. To freeze thinly sliced meat or small pieces of meat, just spread them out thinly in a bag, and break off what you want to use. In the U.S., those frozen packs of thin beef meant for Philly cheese steaks are already conveniently portioned for you. In Switzerland 'fondue chinoise' frozen packs are equally convenient.
• Premade freezer stock items you make yourself, especially mini-burgers or meatballs and soboro, are endlessly handy to have around. Just take out what you need, and re-heat.
• Processed meats like ham, bacon and sausage are also handy, used in moderation. These are standby items for most bento makers in Japan, especially the ubiquitous weiner. For instance, you could cut up some fish-shaped weiners (very easy to do, and much easier than weiner flowers and scatter a couple on top of an otherwise vegetable-based bento for meat and cuteness. You could wrap some bacon around some pre-steamed asparagus (you get the plain steamed version), or add some cut up ham to a salad or stir fry.
• Frozen shuumai or gyoza dumplings are also useful to have. Making your own is best - whenever I make gyoza, I always make extra and freeze them. You can find premade shuumai and gyoza at Asian grocery stores (see notes). Frozen shuumai can be steamed, deep-fried or panfried, or just nuked.
• Even if your favorite big/meat eater doesn't need to lose weight, don't pile on the fat content and calories with the extra you add. His or her bento should still be healthy.

What do you do to deal with a bigger eater or an omnivore's bento needs?

• note: There was a scare recently in Japan about contaminated frozen gyoza dumplings from China. If you are very paranoid, stick to ones you make yourself.

2010 was pretty event-filled for me. I went to Japan twice, after many years away, for a total of nearly 5 months, re-acquainting myself with my roots. Both my parents went through serious illnesses and operations. I moved into a new (old) house in a French village, then promptly got a serious infection and was hospitalized for weeks. And last but certainly not least, I finished a little book that so far has been way more popular than anyone anticipated.

2011 is the Year of the Hare or Rabbit (usagi) according to what's commonly called the Chinese Zodiac in the west (in Japan, the 12 animals symbolizing the years are called eto 干支). That will make me a toshi onna, or woman who was born during the year of the bunny. (If you'll be 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, etc. next year, you too will be a toshi onna during the Bunny Year, or a toshi otoko if you're a guy. And of course, babies born next year will be Bunny Year Babies.) Being a toshi onna (or otoko) is not necessarily considered to be all good; you may have good luck, but you may be in danger of running into bad luck too. Either way, if I am to believe such things, it may turn out to be an even more interesting year than 2010.

I know that we can make resolutions at any time of the year, but New Years Day is really the perfect time to shake off the past and make a promise to oneself to start something new, or continue a good thing. I'd certainly like to shake off the bad things about 2010, and arm myself with some good intentions and plans for 2011.

Bento-wise, I'm interested a accomplishing number of things: exploring some traditional Japanese foods more deeply, researching the world of ekiben further, using bentos as a continuing tool towards keeping my blood sugar in check (it's working well so far in that respect, barring some lapses such as extended mochi testing sessions) and improving my decorative food cutting skills. But above all, I want to continue spreading the word of bento around the world, and introducing people to the fun and versatility of the portable meal in a box.

So, how about you? Do you have any bento-related resolutions for 2011? Share them with the world right here!

A hidden bonus giveaway

One of the people who share their bento related resolution in the comments here will get one precious advanced copy of the 2nd printing of The Just Bento Cookbook, signed of course. The book is sold out on Amazon.com right now, and getting scarce in other places until they can receive new shipments, so if you didn't get one in your Christmas stocking, now's your chance. Your resolution/comment must be posted here (and it must be a comment, not an email reply if you're reading this by email) by the end of 2010 - that is, until 11:59:59pm of December 31st CET (Central European Time). Good luck, and let's ring out the old year with a bang!

(Comments are now closed. The winner of the book will be announced soon! Happy New Year!)

One barrier to bentos for a lot of people might be the whole idea of eating cooked food that's cold, or at room temperature. The basic bento in Japan is meant to be eaten at room temperature, and is still very tasty (insulated/keep-hot bento containers are not that widespread in use, despite the efforts of manufacturers). Aside from some food that's designated otherwise, we are geared to thinking that food that's cooked should be hot. It's true that food that's meant to be eaten hot can taste blah when cold. There are some tricks to use when making food that you intend to eat in a non-heated bento though.

• Make sure that you flavor it well. When food gets cold, flavors can get muted. So strong flavors work better. Subtly flavored things will taste bland. Strong flavored sauces like Worcestershire sauce, steak sauce or tonkatsu sauce, ketchup, soy sauce and so on are popular for bento cooking because of this. This is also why you may feel you want to bring along some soy sauce for pouring over some of your food.
• Salt things well. Related to the above, but for the sake of flavor you should make sure your food is well salted, because salty flavor can fade away. (This is why snack foods are so high in sodium.) You may want to balance the salty foods with non-salty (like plain rice) for health reasons though.
• Avoid very greasy foods, There's nothing as unappetising as cold, congealed fat. So avoid foods that have a lot of animal fat or other fats that solidify at room temperature - butter, ghee, etc.
• If using fried foods, make sure they are well drained and cooled before packing. Deep fried foods are very popular as bento box fillers in Japan, as I've shown here previously. The key to making sure that fried foods like tempura, tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlets) and korokke (croquettes) taste good in your bento box though is to cool them down completely before packing, or the batter will get soggy and limp - not nice!
• Anything liquid is better very hot, or very cold. Lukewarm soup is not very nice! Soup should be piping hot, so bring it along in a thermos or insulated container, unless you have a microwave at work. Or bring along a mix, homemade concentrated soup or miso soup ball and add boiling water. Stews and such also do not fare well at room temperature, so you'll want to pull our your insulated lunch box. (On the other hand, stews, curries and such are some of the few foods that do taste great kept hot for some hours.)
• Make sure your pasta is al dente, and flavored and coated well. I do like pasta or noodles on occasion in my bento, but I don't like soggy or limp pasta. So I cook the pasta al dente, or just a bit chewy. And I make sure it's well coated with whatever sauce I'm using, so that it's not sticking together turning into a lump.

[Edit, added later at my mom's suggestion]

• Avoid using any sauce that you used a starchy thickening agent in: Stews, some soups, and especially gravy that have been thickened with a roux, cornstarch and so on when thickened may form a most unappetizing skin.
• Garlic and onion must be cooked well, or they will smell when cooled. Garlic and onion seem to get stronger when they cool, unlike other flavors.

Onigiri (rice balls) are a staple bento ingredient, and can be made in all kinds of shapes with all kinds of fillings. As I've covered this past week or so, you can even get bento boxes designed specifically for carrying onigiri. Previously on Just Bento and Just Hungry, I've covered how to make them the traditional way by hand, and using plastic wrap and a cup.

Reader Samantha (aka Koorogi) sent in this great way to make onigiri that cleverly uses the corner of a plastic bag, to make these perfectly triangular or cone-shaped rice balls, as well as other shapes. It's definitely a method worth adding to your repertoire. (All the photos in this entry are taken by Samantha.)

The basic tools she uses are: a plastic bag, a bowl or container containing salted water, and a rice paddle. She recommends starting the process by cooking the rice first, cooking the filling if you are using one, and getting everything together while the rice finishes cooking. (She uses Calrose brand rice: See this all-encompassing article about onigiri for what kind of rice to use that sticks well together!)

Here's how she forms a basic unfilled onigiri, in her own words:

1. "Take a small bowl and put some water and salt in it, stir until the salt has dissolved."
2. "Take a Ziplock bag and dip the inside into the salted water, then turn it back the right way (top left photo). Make sure that there's not a pool of water inside, that it's just sprinkled lightly."
3. "Take your rice from the steamer while it's still hot (I would recommend that you get an idea of your portions by using your rice paddle to section your portions out after you've fluffed it, this way you don't have to worry about measuring things in the middle of making your onigiri or running out of one of the components). "
4. "Place the total desired amount that you're going to use into the bag (top right photo). "
5. "Push it all towards one of the bottom corners (bottom left photo)."
6. " Push all the air out and twist the top while shaping it (bottom right photo)."

Samantha says that you can form the onigiri into other shapes while it's still in the bag - her kids like kitty shaped onigiri!

Making filled onigiri is just as easy, with a little adjustment. At step 4, put in 2/3rds of the total amount of rice for the onigiri in the bag. Then:

1. "Press and mold using your fingers a cup out of the rice (top 2 photos above). Then fill this with your desired amount of filling (again, I would recommend that your section this out like you did with the rice). Press it gently down so that it's level with the top of the “rice cup” (middle left photo)."
2. "Next, take the last bit of your rice portion (should be about 1/3 of the original amount) and using your rice paddle, place it on top of the “rice cup” and pat it down with the paddle (middle right photo). If you're having trouble getting your ingredients into the bag, just fold the outside Ziplock part down and it automatically creates a gaped opening. Using your fingers gently pinch the edges so that the “rice lid” connects with the “rice cup”."
3. "Continue molding it until you're happy with the shape and sure that the “lid” and “cup” are attached (otherwise it will just fall apart and your fillings will be everywhere). Push all the air out and twist the top while shaping it (bottom left photo). Turn it over and press it gently, but firmly to the counter (or plate) to make the bottom flat (bottom right), then untwist the bag and set it onto the plate."

Once the onigiri are formed, you can add nori seaweed, sesame seeds, more salt if needed, and so on. She says that using this method, it only takes about "20-25 seconds to prepare an individual non filled onigiri and about 35-40 seconds per filled onigiri" - and it's only her second try!

Tilapia filling

For the tasting looking filling the onigiri shown here, Samantha used frozen tilapia that she gets in big bags from Sam's Club (she says Albertson's carries them as well). Here's her recipe:

• 1 piece of Tilapia
• Salt (preferably freshly ground sea salt)
• Soy Sauce
• Sesame Seeds

"To prepare the Tilapia filling, place a single piece of frozen Tilapia (one individual pack, plastic removed) in a non stick skillet. No oil or anything should be needed. You can spray the skillet with a light spray of Pam if you would like. Once it starts turning white (instead of translucent) flip it over. Once it starts to brown, salt. I use freshly ground sea salt that you can pick up at most stores, but you can use table salt as well. Break it up gently as you continue flipping it. It should begin to start flaking. Once it's completely broken up and starting to get crunchy, sprinkle some sesame seeds and then pour a little bit of soy sauce on it (to taste), cook it a few minutes longer until the fish is not so wet because of the soy sauce. Once your filling is done, go ahead and set it aside."

Samantha says: "Even my husband (who can't stand white rice) fell in love with them and is now asking me to start making him full on bentos as long as they include onigiri."

A big thanks to Samantha for sharing her great method!

[Update:] Also check out the Onigiri (omusubi) FAQ!

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.

But first to dispell some onigiri myths...

• Onigiri do not have to be triangular in shape.
• Onigiri do not have to be covered with nori seaweed.
• Onigiri do not have to have a filling.
• If the rice is sushi rice (flavored with sushi vinegar), it is no longer onigiri, it's sushi.

The one rule of onigiri is...

Onigiri must be made with sticky, short- or medium-grain rice, ideally steam-cooked japonica type rice. If you can't get a hold of Japanese rice (also commonly sold as 'susi rice'), Italian medium-grain rices uses for risotto like vialone (which is the most like Japanese urichi-mai), arborio and so on can be used. Long grain type rice just will not stick together sufficiently. See the Looking at Rice article for an in-depth explanation of different types of rice, and what can and cannot be used successfully for onigiri.

(Note that I've used white rice for illustration purposes for this article, but properly cooked brown rice can be used in most cases too.)

The keys to great tasting onigiri are

• Good rice, properly washed and cooked. There is a big difference between mediocre rice and good rice
• Sufficient salt to flavor the onigiri - either on the outside if making the usual type of onigiri, or with a salty filling inside, or salty enough sprinkles.

Traditional onigiri shapes

As stated above, an onigiri does not have to be triangular. As long as it holds together, it can be any shape possible.

Above are the the traditional hand-formed onigiri shapes: triangle, flattened round, and cylinder or tawara. Tawara is the shape of the traditional straw bale that was for storing and transporting rice.

Type 1: The plain, unadorned, unfilled onigiri

This is a plain ball of rice, lightly salted on the outside. There is no filling, nor any cover. If one has excellent quality rice, such as top class shinmai (new rice from the current harvest) and wants to savor the pure flavor of the rice, this is the one to have.

A plain onigiri like this is the essence of Japanese food to me: rice, and salt. Rice was so important that the wealth of lords used to be measured in how much rice their lands produced, and salt is used extensively in Shinto rituals even now, to purify and sanctify. The onigiri as religious icon? Why not?

Type 2: The filled, nori covered onigiri

This is the most popular kind of onigiri, with a small amount of salty filling in the inside covered with plain rice, which is covered partly or fully with nori. Depending on if you like your nori crispy or a bit soft and moist, you either carry the nori separately and wrap it around the rice when eating, or put it on the rice when making (and when the rice is still warm). Since it's like thin paper, it can be cut easily with scissors, and is used quite a lot for decorative 'cute' bento.

Type 3: The sprinkled onigiri

This is a filled or unfilled onigiri that is sprinkled on the outside with something. Sesame seeds, gomashio (sesame seeds mixed with salt), or furikake (mixed savory sprinkles - there are many various flavors) are commonly used. The one on the left is sprinkled with gomashio, and the one on the right with two colors of yukari (dried shiso leaf powder).

Type 4: The mixed-rice onigiri

For this type of onigiri, the rice is first mixed with something, then formed into a ball. The example above on the left is mixed with green peas, and the one on the right is mixed with homemade furikake made from radish leaves and bonito flakes (recipe ). Since the rice is flavored, this type usually doesn't have a filling, and is often not covered to show the rice off (or just has a minimal nori strip). Anything can be mixed into the rice like this as long as it's not too moist or oily, which will make the rice grains fall apart.

Type 5: The visible-inside onigiri

This type of onigiri shows off the inside and is only wrapped around the sides, rather than all around the ball. This one is rather more difficult to make than other types.

Type 6: Onigiri with alternate wrappings

Nori is the most common onigiri wrapping, but there are other wrappings. Here is one wrapped in salted green shiso leaves.

Other wrappings include nozawana zuke (pickled green leaves) and hakusai zuke (pickled nappa cabbage), thin dried kombu seaweed called tororo, and so on. I've even seen salted lettuce leaves and kimchee used as wrappers. Onigiri wrapped with alternate wrappers can be filled or unfilled, depending on how salty the wrapping is.

Type 7: Yaki Onigiri - grilled onigiri

Onigiri that is grilled on a wire grill until crispy, then brushed with soy sauce or miso. Yaki onigiri are best served hot, though they can be chewy yet tasty bento additions. Yaki onigiri usually do not have fillings, though some people like to put a little umeboshi or okaka inside (see the Filling section below).

What goes inside the onigiri

In response to my previous onigiri posts on Just Hungry, the question asked the most is about fillings. I have already written about this before, but it bears repeating here. Basically, anything that fits with rice and is not too greasy or watery can be used as filling. So, if the traditional fillings don't appeal to you, try things that you like and see how they taste!

If you are a traditionalist as I tend to be, here are the most popular fillings.

From the top, clockwise:

• Shiozake or shiojake, salted salmon which is grilled and flaked. It's easy to make your own.
• Umeboshi (salty pickled plum). A little of this goes a long way. It also has some antibacterial qualities, so it's the ideal filling for onigiri that might be travelling at room temperature for some time. The photo shows regular soft umeboshi Not shown here is the crunchy and smooth skinned kariume.
• Tarako, salty cod roe that is cooked and cut into small chunks. (While tarako is closely related to mentaiko, spicy cod roe, you don't see mentaiko used as an onigiri filling that often for some reason, but it's equally good as an onigiri filling.)
• Okaka is bonito flakes or katsuobushi (the kind used for making dashi stock) mixed until moistened with soy sauce. (Confusingly it's also just called katsuobushi or katsubushi.) You must take care not to mix in too much soy sauce, or it will seep through the rice and cause the onigiri to crumble.
• Umekaka, bonito flakes mixed with umeboshi.
• Kombu no tsukudani or shio kombu - kombu seaweed that's been cooked in a soy sauce based sauce until tender and salty. Other types of tsukudani can be used too. How to make your own _kombu no tsukudani_.

Rather less traditional but widely popular:

• Tempura - shrimp tempura (shrimp fried in a light batter) used either as a filling or on the outside. This type of onigiri is called tenmusu. It's a regional speciality of the city of Nagoya.
• Canned flaked tuna mixed with mayonnaise - the tuna is almost always oil-packed. This filling doesn't keep that well - eat within a few hours.
• A piece of chicken karaage (fried chicken).
• Various kinds of chopped up pickles

Fun with onigiri

If you use molds you can make other shapes too, such as these above. Why not a bunny or cat onigiri? Personally I don't use molds much since I can make them by hand a lot faster, but they can be fun if you have the time, or are making them for a party or something like that. (I actually used egg molds to make the ones in the photo.) Faces can be made with cut nori or anything you can imagine. It should all be edible though!

You can also play around with the size of the onigiri. Here's a 'jumbo onigiri' side by side with a regular sized onigiri. The Jumbo has three kinds of fillings inside,has about 2 1/2 cups of rice, and comes in at around 600 calories. It's a two-fisted onigiri!

Eater beware, or the calories in onigiri

A small to average sized onigiri has around 1/3 to 1/2 cup of rice, which is 80-110 calories. Depending on how big you make them they could be even more. If you are doing portion control, it's best to pre-measure the amount of rice as in this method.

Freezing and keeping onigiri

Onigiri can be frozen, well wrapped and filled (except for tempura and chicken karaage type fried fillings, which can get soggy or tough if you microwave them later). I would not make onigiri with frozen rice however - it's best to form the onigiri an then freeze it. You can then de-frost them, still wrapped, at room temperature, in the fridge or gently defrosted in the microwave. See also: Keeping onigiri fresh and more.

Combined with the previous onigiri articles linked to here, I hope that this answers most, if not all, of the onigiri questions you may have. (Except for the famous Hawaiian Spam Musubi. I still haven't tried it. Anyone want to invite me to Hawaii? ^_^) (Since this article was originally posted, I've been to Hawaii, and tried spam musubi several times. I found them edible but do not love them. Sorry, spam musubi fans!)

[Edit:] This post is Bento Of the Week on Yum Sugar. Thanks to Team Sugar!

Before asking a general question about onigiri, please check out the Onigiri FAQ page. Chances are your answer is already there!

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.)

Type 1: The regular bento, basic bento

This is a homey bento with no particular aim or philosophy behind it beyond being tasty, filling, reasonably nutritious and attractive. They use meat, fish, and prepared foods that have been used in bento lunches for decades: fried korokke, frozen shumai, the ubiquitous wiener sausage, and so on.

Example Japanese bento blog: Bento. This has helpful ingredient listings in English, though it's mostly in Japanese.

A great book of this type is _Kihon no Obento_, a "mook" (magazine-format book) published by Orange Page, a popular magazine. It's in large format with gorgeous closeups of all the bentos and recipes, so even if you don't understand Japanese you should be able to get a lot out of it.

Type 2: Highly decorated 'art' bento

Also known as "cute bento", "character bento (kyaraben)", "entertaining bento (entaatein-bento), etc. This type of bento has garnered the most interest outside of Japan on the web, because they are so visual. This is really more of a hobby rather than an everyday thing that most Japanese mothers do, contrary to some misconceptions out there.

Example Japanese bento site: the famous e-obento - not a blog, but updated frequently.

This site, by a mother of a kindergarten age child is a slightly less extreme example. She decorates a bit, but not always, and all the bentos are quite pretty even without smiley faces.

Example book: _Miyazawa Mari no waku waku oekaki bento_, by the owner of the e-obento site. (This is another "mook", and has beautiful large photos.) She has several other books out on the same subject. The bentos she makes are quite mind-boggling. I can barely imagine actually eating them because they are so pretty.

Type 3: Simple bento, soshoku bento, healthy bento

Health-conscious bentos have been around for a long time, but in the last decade or so there has been a lot more attention being paid to bentos made with soshoku in mind. Soshoku means plain, simple food that is respects the ingredients. Much, though not all, of the focus is on traditional Japanese foods. Organic food, fresh vegetables, and whole grains are emphasized. Not all of it is vegetarian, since fish is used sometimes. There are offshoots of this category that are vegan or vegetarian: some go back to traditional sho-jin cooking, vegan cooking developed by Zen Buddhist monks. Macrobiotic bentos are quite popular too. While they appeal more to adults, some health-conscious mothers focus on this for their kids' bento lunches too. It's interesting that even e-obento is focusing on things like sprouting brown rice these days.

Example Japanese bento blog: C's Blog, a mostly macrobiotic bento blog.

Example book: _Soshoku no susume: Obento recipe_. This is one of my favorite bento books, and it was a real eye opener for me when I first read it. It advocates simple, seasonal bentos, emphasizing brown rice or half-hulled brown rice (which is unfortunately not very available outside of Japan) and vegetables.

My all time favorite bento book, Watashi tachi no Obento (Our Obento, links on the left sidebar), which features bento lunches from regular people, has quite a lot of bentos that could be considered to be in the soshoku type.

I tend to make bentos of this last type, with some forays into the first type, the basic bento. Simple soshoku bento really keep me grounded health-wise, as well as being tasty and beautiful to look at without too much fiddling around. (I have nothing against bento artists who have the time and enthusiasm to make art bento, but I'd rather admire them rather than make them. I do make amigurumi and things though. Maybe that's another blog.)

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.

Shopping

I do most of my grocery shopping on the weekend though I do buy veggies and things on other days. (Our local supermarkets tend to start their sales on Wednesdays or Thursdays, so that affects the shopping pattern too.)

• I also consider vegetables like green onions, round onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, celery and chili peppers to be staples and I get nervous without them in the fridge. Otherwise, I try to buy whatever fruit and vegetables are in season and try to plan the bentos around that.
• Other fresh things I stock up on: any chicken, meat or fish products that I can use, especially when they're on sale; various kinds of tofu or other vegetable proteins; eggs. Any extra meat or fish goes to the freezer. (Tofu can be frozen but will change texture, so usually I just buy what I'll be using during the week.)
• I do a general check of stock ingredients and replenish - beans, rice and other grains, spices and condiments, flours and so on; frozen peas, edamame, natto etc. for the freezer.

Prepping food

I don't do all of these things every weekend, but I do often do one or two of them. I think the key to keeping habits going is to not try to do everything.

• Leafy greens, especially spinach and lettuce, can be a hassle to wash, so I try to wash them soon after getting them home. Spin them dry in a salad spinner and store wrapped in paper towels and then in plastic bags - they stay fairly fresh for at least a few days. (You can try pre-washed and bagged leafy greens if you can be sure they are safe.)
• I soak some kombu seaweed and either dried shiitake mushrooms or bonito flakes in cold water in a big jug (as in the photo above). The soaking liquid can be used as dashi stock, and the shiitake can be used for various dishes. The kombu can be reused once (though it does lose flavor). After that I usually cut it up and use it in soup, or freeze it and eventually use it to make tsukdani (recipe to follow).
• Besides freezing rice, I often make a batch of beans of some kind - soy beans, kidney beans, azuki beans, etc. I freeze the cooked beans with a little of the cooking liquid in 1 to 2-cup portions. You can use canned beans, but the variety of dried beans is a lot wider usually than canned. And it's way cheaper. For making vegetarian dishes this is sort of required I think.
• I make one or two joubisai (staples) like salted salmon and stock them in the freezer, or a big pot of something like stewed potatoes and meat (nikujaga) for the fridge. I usually do this while cooking dinner - for example we might have some of the nikujaga for Sunday dinner, and the rest in some guise in bentos during the week.

What I don't do much of

• Pre-chop or pre-grate onions, ginger and garlic. Some books recommend you do this (even making little packets of frozen onions or grated ginger). I would rather use fresh ginger and so on whenever I need it.
• Pre-cook vegetables more than a day in advance. I think they lose freshness, flavor and texture if kept in the fridge for too long. I do sometimes cook things the night before.

Even if you can manage to do one or two things to be ready, your bento making will go a lot quicker and smoother, and you won't be as liable to giving up and grabbing a Big Mac Meal!

A few weeks ago, there was an article in the Food section of the New York Times about cooking pasta in a reduced amount of water (registration required), written by Harold McGee aka The Curious Cook. (In case you don't know, Harold McGee is a very interesting food writer, who approaches cooking from a scientific angle. If you are of a geeky bent or love reading about the hows and whys of food in general, I highly recommend his book On Food and Cooking.) The gist of the article is that it's possible to cook pasta in far less water than is usually recommended, and that you can even start from cold water!

While the rationale in the article for reducing the amount of cooking water is to save energy, I was intrigued by the possible time saving benefits, especially when making bentos. Up until now I've tried to save as much time as possible by boiling water in an electric kettle (which is high on my list of essential bento making equipment), then pouring it into a pot to cook pasta. But I was still using plenty of water in relation to the amount of pasta (around 6 cups for a cup of dry pasta). I'd often re-boil another potful of water for cooking other things, like vegetables.

In the New York Times article, Mr. McGee uses about 1 to 1.5 quarts (about 1 to 1.5 litres) of cold or boiling water and 2 teaspoons of salt for a pound (450g) of dry pasta. Since I usually only cook about 1 to 1.5 cups of dry pasta (around 100g to 150g) for bentos, that's the amount I started with. I put 1 cup of macaroni into a fairly small saucepan, added about 2 cups of cold water (just enough to cover completely) plus about a teaspoon of salt, and started cooking at high heat.

I needed to stir it around a bit to keep the pasta from sticking to itself and the bottom of the pan, but the water came to the boil in about 3 minutes. I then lowered the heat a bit to a fast-bubbling simmer and let it cook, stirring occasionally, and it took the normal amount of cooking time, about 9 minutes (your time may vary according to the pasta).

In the meantime, I chopped up and sautéed some vegetables and chicken in a frying pan on another burner. Once the pasta was drained, I tossed it into the frying pan for a few minutes. Including the cooling time of about 5 minutes and the time it took me to pack it into a box and so on, I had a all-in-one pasta dish ready to go in under 20 minutes. Not bad! A few hours later (i.e. lunchtime) the flavor of the pasta was not noticeably different from pasta cooked in the regular way for me, and I didn't notice any gumminess or excess starchiness. It certainly had a much better texture than pasta made the night before and re-heated in the morning - which, as you all probably know already, is the other time-saving method for pasta bentos.

I did another pasta boiling experiment, but this time to try to get the water to come to a boil even faster, I put a lid on the pan. Umm, big mistake. The water combined with the starch of the pasta to boil up and out of the pan, flooding the rangetop. I'm sure there is a scientific explanation for why this happens if you put a lid on the pan, but my copy of On Food and Cooking is still in storage so I can't look it up now.

Moving on, I tried cooking the pasta in a similar amount of boiling water. I boiled the water in the electric kettle, then poured about 2 - 2.5 cups (enough to cover completely) over the 1 cup of dry pasta with a teaspoon of salt. Now, I don't think my experimentation methods were quite stringent enough for comparison purposes, since I boiled a whole kettleful of water (1.8l) as opposed to boiling just 2 cups or so of water. Anyway, the kettle water boiled up in around 3 minutes, so the final cooking time of the pasta was similar to starting from cold water, for this small amount of pasta. The result taste- and texture-wise was quite similar too. So, I think if you're just cooking pasta, you can use the cold water method, but if you need more boiling water for cooking something else (e.g. vegetables) then boil up a kettleful of water first and proceed from there.

My conclusion is that this is a great method for cooking the types of pasta that are most suited to bentos - the short kinds like macaroni, penne, orecchiette, fusilli, farfalle and so on. I'm not sure about long pasta, besides the fact that long spaghetti and so on won't fit in a small saucepan without (gasp!) breaking it. Mr. McGee recommends pre-wetting long pasta to prevent it from sticking, but that defeats the objective of saving time and effort for bento making purposes.

I have not tried the less-water method with Japanese noodles like soba and udon yet. My instinct tells me it won't work, since these noodles tend to have a lot more surface starch (which has to be washed off later) compared to dried Italian pasta, but I'll try to give it a go sometime and report back.

In any case, next time you're cooking pasta, for a bento or a quick dinner, give this method a try!

In a recent Japanese magazine article (more about the magazine below), there was a tip to put crisscross lines on top of the rice packed into a bento box, to not only make the rice look a bit prettier, but to make it easier to pick up with chopsticks.

The article didn't say how to form the lines, so I tried a couple of implements including chopsticks and a silicone spatula. In the end I found that a moistened table knife (with a rounded tip) works the best. Also, for maximum effect I 'cut' the rice to the bottom of the box, to form little cubes. This makes it a lot easier to pick up each section of rice. We field-tested it in the last couple of bentos, and it gets our stamp of approval.

You can use the rice-grid as a guide to decorating the top of the rice as I've done here--I just sprinkled every other square with a bit of furikake.

So if you or the person you're making bentos for has some trouble picking up rice neatly with chopsticks, try this out! It will only work with Japanese style or sticky rice however - other types of rice, or fried rice, won't retain the cubes.

Tsucione and Daichi o mamoru kai

The magazine I saw this tip in is called Tsucione, and it's issued by a cooperative called _Daichi o mamoru kai_ (Association To Protect The Earth) which connects small scale organic farmers and fishermen to consumers, mainly by home delivery of what they produce. It's a bit like a CSA (you have to become a member to take advantage of the home delivery and so on), but with much more variety--you get to choose from what a variety of producers produce, instead of just one farm or so. Daichi o mamoru kai also engages in various activities to support organic/sustainable farming and fishing, and small scale producers. If you live in Japan you may want to give them a look (though their site is only in Japanese unfortunately).

Tofu is a great protein, especially useful for vegan or vegetarian, but also useful for lightening up meat based recipes. I use tofu in a number of recipes here, but I thought it would be useful to address how to deal with tofu when you're using it for bento recipes.

Types of tofu

If you go to an Asian/Chinese or Japanese store, you might be confused by the variety of tofus on sale. For bentos you will want to stick to either the fried tofus and tofu products, which have a light brown exterior, or firm, extra firm or momen (momen means cotton) tofus. Tofus that are labeled silken, soft or hiyayakko, have far too much moisture content, and are suited for soups and for eating as-is with condiments. (Also see: Looking at tofu.)

Draining tofu

While fried tofu is lower in moisture content and can be used as-is, when you are using plain tofu for further cooking, you often need to drain off some of the moisture from it. This is particularly important when tofu is being used as a base for burgers and 'meatballs', such as in the green vegan burgers or tuna tofu miso burgers. Simply draining off the water the tofu block comes packed in is not enough. Here are three ways to drain off tofu moisture:

• Traditional method: Put the block of tofu on a plate or other flat surface. Put another flat object, like a cutting board, on top of the tofu, and a light weight (like a can or a small bowl filled with water) on top. Let sit for 10 to 20 minutes, until the tofu block has shrunk to about half its original size. Wipe off any excess moisture with paper towels or clean kitchen towels.
• Boiling method: Cut the tofu into chunks. Put the tofu in a pot of boiling water to cover, and boil for 2-3 minutes. Drain, and let rest in a colander until cool enough to handle. Gently squeeze out excess moisture by gathering up the tofu in paper towels or a clean kitchen towel.
• Microwave method: This is the fastest way. Cut the tofu block in half lenghwise, and put on a microwave-safe plate. Microwave on HIGH, uncovered, for 2 minutes. Careful taking it out - it will be steaming hot! Drain in a colander until cool enough to handle, and squeeze out or wipe off excess moisture before proceeding.

By using one of these draining methods you can avoid soggy-burger syndrome!

Tofu safety

From the food safety point of view, you should really treat tofu as if it were raw fish, If you are packing tofu-based products into your bento, be sure that it is cooked through thoroughly. In addition, some Japanese bento cookbooks recommend avoiding tofu block + meat type dishes if the weather is very hot.

Finally, be absolutely sure you are getting fresh tofu! Tofu should never, ever smell funny or taste 'off' or sour.

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.

Other things I have in squeeze bottles include ketchup (store it upside down, and shake before squeezing out), mustard, and mayonnaise. I also like things in tubes. A lot of Japanese condiments like wasabi paste and pre-grated ginger comes in tubes (though I can't stand pre-grated ginger. Wasabi paste is better.) Around this part of the world we also get things like mustard, mayonnaise, Cenovis (the Swiss equivalent of Marmite), tomato paste, tapenade (olive paste) and mystery sandwich spreads in toothpaste tube-like tubes. Take a look around the supermarket or your favorite Asian grocery store to see if your favorite condiments come in neat squeeze bottles or tubes!

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.

Mise en place

_Mise en place_ is a French term that means "setting in place". In professional kitchens, mise en place is essential to fast and efficient food preparation. In a home kitchen, you might not need to bother with this that much, but for bento making it's quite useful.

I don't go as far as to lay out all of my tools in the kitchen before going to bed since I'm not that organized, but I do have everything that I will need stored where I can easily get them out. The pots and pans I use all the time, especially the small frying pans, are where I can pull them out right away, the bento boxes and other accoutrements are in one section of my kitchen cupboards, and the electric water kettle is always on the countertop. Nothing slows you down more than having to get to your pans where they are stacked under a pile of other things, or having to search for your bento box behind a lot of other junk.

Another thing I do is to stay away from any equipment that is a bother to clean - things like graters (except for a Microplane - see essential equipment page), whisks and so on. I mostly use a pair of long chopsticks called saibashi for mixing tasks.

A little pre-planning

You don't have to do a lot of elaborate pre-planning, but just knowing what you intend to make will stop you from wasting time. I pre-plan in two stages; first when I am doing the grocery shopping, and second on the night before, when I put together a short list of what I intend to put in the bento boxes, written out on a Post-It note and stuck to the edge of the range hood. This is rather similar to the order slips that come into a restaurant. [Edit: Now I use this handy weekly bento planner sheet which makes things a lot easier!] List in hand, you can start cooking right away.

Washing up

I don't have a dishwasher (I also need a new kitchen!) and I hate to come home to a sinkful of dirty pots and bowls. So, I wash everything up before I'm done with the bentos - usually in the last 5 minutes while the bentos are cooling down (see a bento making timeline). It's not as much of a pain as it might sound, because I mostly use non-stick pans or coated enamel pans, I don't use that many pans, and I only use a little oil in anything I make. (Oily mess is the most bothersome to wash up.) I use only a smidgen of dishwashing liquid, and just rinse most things with the hottest water that will come out of the tap.

The one pan that can be a bit sticky to clean up is the grill pan (which I use maybe once a week at most), but I've found that pouring in some of the hot water from the trusty electric water kettle while the pan is hot will loosen anything stuck to the grill, which can then be just brushed and rinsed off.

Don't forget to at least rinse off the empty bento box when you get home!

There are lots of bento-related books published every year in Japan. While most of them have plenty of colorful pictures, some are too wordy to be really useful for people who don't read Japanese. Here is a list of books that I have in my collection that I think would be very useful even if you don't read the text. Most of these books reflect my preference for books about healthy, vegetable-centric bento, mainly aimed at adults.

I'll be updating this page from time to time, so please check back occasionally. You can also see other, less annotated book recommendations in the Amazon Japan aStore.

Incidentally, if you do get one of these books and have a question about something specific, like "What the heck is that thing in the bento on page 94 of XYZ?", ask away in the comments. I won't have time to do full translations (or the rights to post them here) but I'll try my best to help out.

You may also be interested in the Ordering Japanese books and media online post on Just Hungry.

1. Everyday inspiration

Watashitachi no Obento (Our Obento) is published by a great lifestyle magazine called ku:nel (I think the name is derived from kuu (eat) neru (sleep)). It shows the everyday bento lunches of regular Japanese people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, mostly who work outside the home. I love this book because it shows how real people make and use bento. There is not a single octopus wiener in sight...not that I am dead set against pink meat cephalopods, but they are extra frills for special occasions or to coax a young child to eat, not really for busy adult people to be making in the morning for their own lunches. The 'regular people' bentos in this book are still attractive and colorful, and look delicious. This is one book I look at regularly when I want a boost of inspiration for my own bentos.

Besides from Amazon Japan, this book is also available from Jlist/JBox and YesAsia.

2. Large, colorful photos in an oversized mook

Mooks are magazine-format books; they are bound like magazines, so are not as durable as book-bound books, but are still usually printed on high quality paper with topnotch pictures. The Kihon no... (Basic...) series from Orange Page, another magazine publisher, are really terrific large-format mooks that show the basics of various types of cuisine and cooking. Kihon no Obento (Basic Obento) is the bento entry in the series. The photos of bentos are life-size in many cases, and the recipes have step-by-step illustrations, so you can get a lot out of it even if you don't read the text. If you want to see how everyday, basic bento ingredients are prepared, this mook is one to get. Available from Amazon Japan. It's not carried by JList or YesAsia unfortunately.

3. A colorful intro to macrobiotic bento

I tend to be a bit skeptical about macrobiotics, but there's no denying that macrobiotic cookbooks in Japan have some great vegan and vegetarian recipes.

Makurobiochikku no Obento (Macrobiotic Obento) is another mook from Orange Page. It has big, beautiful photos of bentos close up, step by step instructions for many items, and more. If you're interested in vegan/vegetarian bentos this is a very good one to get. Some of the ingredients may be puzzling, so come here and ask what it is! Available from Amazon Japan.

4. Beautiful girly bento, for crafty people too

Onnanoko no Daisuki na Obento (Obento that Girls Love) is a beautiful book. Aimed mainly at mothers with daughters who are in school (I think probably girls of mid-elementary school age and higher), the style is quite different from many other bento books aimed at the moms-with-kids market. The bento contents are simple yet beautifully arranged and easy to prepare, and quite inspirational.

A bonus is that this book also has some crafty ideas for cute or elegant bento wrapper cloths and bags and so on, to make lunchtime that much nicer. This one is available from YesAsia as well as Amazon Japan.

5. Inspiration from the pros: Ekiben, train station bento

Ekiben__ are bento boxes sold at train stations (there's also an equivalent that's sold at airports, _kuuben). The best ekiben are the pinnacle of portable bento, culinarically and artistically. Regional ekiben makers take great pride in their seasonal bento featuring local products. Shun no Ekiben Meikan 800 (800 Seasonal Station Bentos) is one of many books that lovingly catalog the variety of ekiben sold around Japan. The pictures are inspirational, and will whet yor appetite for travelling to Japan and doing an ekiben trip for sure. If you read Japanese the book also has detail travel information so you can really use it to plan a trip. (I intend to do an ekiben trip as soon as I can afford it myself.) This book is available at Jlist/JBox, YesAsia and Amazon Japan.

Manga fans may want to check out a whole manga series dedicated to ekiben love. Ekiben Hitoritabi (Ekiben Lone Travel) is about the owner of a bento shop (!) who receives a 10th wedding anniversary gift from his wife - a rail pass and 'orders' to fulfill his lifelong dream of exploring the ekiben of Japan. The detailed drawings of both ekiben and trains make this series nirvana for any bento or train nut. There are four so far in the series, which are listed on this Amazon astore page. YesAsia also carries volumes 1, 2 and 3.

(Disclaimer: JustBento is affiliated with Amazon Japan, Jlist/JBox and YesAsia, and links are affiliate links that help to support the site.)

A regular family outing bento (photo by Michiko Ebina)

(Note: This is in part a belated response to the New York Times blog post about bento boxes that appeared in September. I had started it some weeks ago but didn't have the time to finish, until now. Please also read the very thoughtful forum discussion about the post.)

The New York Times blog post about Beauty and the Bento Box was, after the recent balanced article about bento boxes that appeared in the same publication, was rather disappointing. To see yet another piece in the mainstream media focusing just on the aesthetics of bentos, and specifically on charaben, gives me a "What, again?" sort of resigned feeling. The question that they posed to a group of experts (only one of whom is Japanese...I wonder how many have even had a homemade bento for lunch?) was a leading question if there ever was one: "What does the care devoted to the visual details in a packed lunch suggest about the culture? Why is such value placed on aesthetics in everyday life in Japan?".

I've repeated this many times on this site already, but the basic definition of a bento box is "a meal in a box", as the subtitle of this site says. Bentos can be for any meal. They can be made by and for anyone. They are often portable, but not always (as for bento box lunches served at sit-down restaurants). In short, bentos are just part of everyday life for most Japanese people. Charaben are just one category of bentos.

A more realistic view of charaben in Japan

In Japan, cute charaben are ostensibly made to overcome the eating habits of small preschool or kindergarten aged children. At least, that is the reason given by many charaben bloggers and book authors as to why they started making charaben.

However, charaben has evolved to the point where it is now a hobby and an industry. I liken it to any other creative hobby, like knitting or crochet or painting. It may be food for kids, but it exists just as much, if not more, as a creative outlet for their moms (and the occasional dad). Kids are not the ones buying up nori punches and egg molds and Rirakkuma shaped onigiri shapers; it's their moms. There are charaben contests on a national scale, often sponsored by makers of charaben goods (such as Sanyo) or bento-related foods (such as Ajinomoto, who also pay well known charaben bloggers to come up with cute bentos featuring their frozen shuumai dumplings and such).

The daily opening of the bento box at kindergarten has come to be regarded as a sort of local competition between charaben-creating moms. Recently there's been a backlash against this - some mothers are complaining that they don't have the time to make such elaborate cute bentos, and that their kids are made to feel inferior, or teased and even bullied, because of this. As a result, some preschools and kindergartens have started to ban charaben. Some Japanese charaben bloggers have written about how they have had to restrict their creative efforts to lunches served at home.

Since most elementary/primary schools serve school lunches, mothers are relieved of their bento making duties once their kids are older. Even if the kids still need bentos, as they get older they - especially boys - start to reject charaben, as being childish (kodomoppoi) and embarassing (hazukashii).

My sister's take on charaben, from a Japanese mom's point of view

My sister Mayumi, who lives in the Tokyo area, is the mother of two kids. They are both in elementary school now, but when they were in kindergarten she made bentos for them every day. She said that she just avoided the charaben 'senso' (wars) by not making charabens at all, since she didn't have the time or inclination. Her children fortunately didn't get teased or anything for their not-cute 'plain' bentos. But she says it was a relief in many ways when her youngest graduated from kindergarten. She, and the kids, love school lunch.

Mayumi also related the competitiveness of charaben to the peculiar Japanese social phenomenon called "Playground Debut". When you are in a new neighborhood, your child's first appearance at the local playground (or debut) is a very big deal. If you as the parent, and your kids, do not get accepted by the existing clique there, you are doomed to playing on your own, or seeking out another playground. Japanese society can be very stressful and competitive for kids and their mothers. (I found this article on Salon from 1999 that conveys this kind of competitive and stressful situation quite well, from an expatriate American mother's point of view.)

Looking at the current bento book bestsellers in Japan

A breakdown of the of the 50 bestselling bento books on Amazon Japan as of this writing, might provide a snapshot of the state of the interest in bentos in Japan:

• 14 books about everyday bentos for everyone
• 8 books about make-ahead bento recipes, freezing, speedy bento (under 10-15 minutes in the morning), etc.
• 8 books about charaben techniques
• 7 books about vegetarian/vegan/macrobiotic or weight loss bentos
• 6 books about everyday bentos for kids (mainly kindergarten and nursery school age)
• 4 bento essay books - ones that extol the virtues of homemade bentos (the topselling bento book fits in this category)
• 3 books about bento for (and made by) men

Unfortunately, since charaben are so visually striking, most of the attention paid to bentos from outside Japan focuses on this small segment, and, like the New York Times blog post, tries to draw some conclusions about Japanese society in general from that.

It's understandable that this happens. It's still rather frustrating though, and it's not really the whole picture at all.

It's interesting to see that books extolling the virtues of homemade bentos are amongst the top sellers in this category. As in most societies, more and more people in Japan are eating fast food, especially from the ubiquitous konbini or convenience stores, which stock every kind of grab-and-eat food that you can think of, including readymade bentos. Those readymade bentos are often not that healthy, filled with lots of cheap carbohydrates and deep fried food.

My take on charaben and bentos in general

I admire the creativity of skilled charaben artists. I am not that skilled, but I dabble a little in decorated bentos myself. However, I don't think that charaben are something anyone can make every day. Even the most dedicated charaben-oriented mothers in Japan don't.

I do believe that a little time taken to make sure a bento box is attractively presented is a great thing. What can be possibly wrong about food that looks as appetizing as it tastes, that is pretty as well as being nutritious. Whenever there's some mainstream media thing about bentos, you can be sure there will be a few snarky comments along the lines of "a peanut butter sandwich was good enough for my parents and good enough for me, and it's good enough for my kids" or "spending so much time on food is unnatural/sacriligeous/spoiling your kids/un-American" et al. As much as I think charaben all the time is unrealistic, I don't get this 'food must look plain' thing either. (I wonder if those people who object to pretty lunches also reject decorated birthday cakes, and cupcakes with colored icing?)

There is a long tradition in Japanese cuisine of making food that looks beautiful. The highest form of Japanese cuisine is so beautifully presented that it has inspired chefs around the world. That sense of aesthetics does trickle down to everyday home cooking. But most people don't make it into a hobby.

I'd like to close with a translated quote from a bento book written back in 1998, by one of my favorite food writers, Katsuyo Kobayashi (see footnote). The book is called __Katsuyo Kobayashi's "Obento's Decided!"__. (kobayashi katsuyo no obento kimatta!), a book that is still in print 11 years later, and in the top 50 bestselling bento book list mentioned above. (My copy is from the 22nd printing in 2006.) Here is what she writes in the foreword:

I am really not fond of obentos that are overly decorated. An obento is one of the three daily meals. It's just an everyday lunch on the go. In other words, instead of eating lunch at home, we bring it to school, to work, or on an outing. Rather than sausages cut to look like an octopus, or onigiri made to look like people's faces, I want to honor the beauty and deliciousness of food that Nature has given us - the yellow of tamagoyaki, the green of spinach, pink salmon, the earth tones of gobo [burdock root], the pure white of rice.

While I'm not totally adverse to purposely made bento decorations as Mrs. Kobayashi is (I do have a soft spot for the occasional sausage decoration or cutely cut out sandwich), I do agree with her general philosophy. While Just Bento is about many kinds of bentos, including charaben, my main focus is always on bentos that taste good and are on the healthy side, and look naturally appetizing. If I add extra decorations to my bentos, I don't spend more than 5 minutes, 10 at the most, on them, unless it's for a special occasion. It's striking a middle ground between a plain sandwich thrown into a brown paper bag, and an astonishing charaben creation that takes hours to assemble.

Or in other words, I'm just trying to spread the good word about everyday bentos.

Footnote: The Kobayashi family, from mother to son

I've read that Mrs. Kobayashi (who in her heyday was everywhere in the food world - on TV, in magazines, churning out several books a year) is not that well anymore, which is a real shame. However, her son Kentaro has been a TV, magazine and cookbook star for some years now too. Some of his books have appeared in translated English this year, including one about bentos called Bento Love. I haven't had a chance to look at this book yet, mainly because it sounds suspiciously like a book of his that I have already, but I did notice that Pikko of Adventures in Bentomaking recently made a boiled salmon recipe from it. Boiled salmon sounded rather familiar - and it's not a usual way to cook salmon in Japan. Sure enough, there's a recipe for Boiled Salmon in his mother's bento book! Not only that, she has a recipe for fried chicken in there called Kentaro Fried Chicken (KFC!). I love this mother-son connection.

(Incidentally, Pikko mentioned that her salmon was rather bland. If you do have that book, do check for me to see if Kentaro specifies the use of salted salmon. His mom's recipe does, and I think it would make all the difference. Salted salmon is a very common ingredient in Japan, but outside of it it's expensive if you can find it. Here's my method for making your own.)