Bento: recipe, cooking features and reviews

Bento is a classic "take-away dinner" in the Japanese style. Japanese housewives consider it their duty to be able or to learn how to prepare such dinners well for their household members. More often bento - containers with rice and fish - take their children with them to school. But adults also collect or buy ready-made boxes with food in stores to have a snack at work.

History of bento

The concept of lunches in a box appeared in Japan in the twelfth century. Of course, in those days the bentos did not look like modern ones. They were small bags, which took lunch for work. Most often it was boiled, and then dried rice. They ate them either dry, or poured with boiled water. After several centuries the Japanese began to make beautiful carved wooden boxes and there already stored their lunches.

As a rule, bento is school lunches. In wartime, school canteens could not provide children with meals, so schoolchildren wore food with them. After the Second World War bento became even more firmly established in the life of the Japanese. There were microwave ovens, taking lunch with them and reheating at work became commonplace. Although traditional bentos are not heated, they are eaten cold.

Boxes for bento

If you decide to collect a lunch in the style of the Japanese bento, the recipe should certainly be based on rice, fish and cooked vegetables. Boxes can be both ordinary plastic, and real works of art made of wood. There are drawers in several tiers. But more often in the stores there are boxes that are somewhat like American lunch boxes. They consist of one or several small compartments, delimited by a partition.

Bento composition

Before you begin to prepare a box with lunch, you need to decide what products bento consists of. The recipe is most often based on boiled rice, fish and pickled or boiled vegetables. The favorite dish of the Japanese is rice balls, small sushi and boiled vegetables in the form of various figurines.

It is important to know exactly how to prepare a bento. The recipe must include dishes that are able to withstand and not deteriorate at room temperature. Traditional Japanese dinners do not need to be stored in a refrigerator, heated in a microwave or, conversely, cooled.

Remember, if you cook hot rice or put bangers in sausages, etc., the food must cool before closing the lid. Japanese bento dinners, recipes, nuances of their preparation - all the moments for the Japanese are subject to certain rules. Starting from buying a box for lunch and ending with the proper storage of cooked meals.

Types of bento

• Sushizume - special sushi for taking out meals.
• Noriben - the simplest dish, consisting of boiled rice, packed in a sheet of nori.
• Toriben is a dish with chicken.
• Makuno-uchi is a bento recipe at home, including rice, slices of fried fish and boiled eggs.
• Dzyukuben - special children's dinners with original serving of dishes.
• Sake bento is a dinner consisting of rice and salmon.
• Kyaraben is an artistic kind of bento. All dishes are carved or decorated in the form of animals, trees, flowers, butterflies, etc.

Bento Recipe Options

• Steamed rice. In the center there is a dried plum. Supplements such a dinner of chicken cutlet and vegetables.
• Sticks of boiled carrots. Rice balls. Fried chicken with tariaki sauce.
• Stringed young boiled soy and a vegetable garnish in the form of chopsticks carrots.
• Fried or steamed rice. Steam vegetables and special sauce.
• Japanese Geza dumplings and pickles or boiled vegetables.

Doing bento at home yourself

Before we begin to prepare Japanese bentos, the recipes of which we will give below, it is important to remember a few simple rules. First, cook as much food as you can eat. Portionality is the main feature of bento. Standard: 4 servings of rice, 2-3 servings of vegetables and one serving of meat or dessert.

Secondly, if you are going to constantly prepare a child for a bento school, then try to choose quality containers or lunch boxes. They should be tightly closed.

Third, to prepare a classic Japanese bento, the recipe will require bright products. Do not be afraid to experiment with color, it's only welcome. Orange carrots, white rice, red cabbage, green pickled cucumber - many options, most importantly - color.

Fourthly, when you prepare a bento, do not be afraid to experiment and use various tools for cooking: toothpicks, stencils, brushes, etc. Even spices can become additions to the picture.

Salad with carrots and corn

For the preparation of salad, you will need: three spoons of canned corn, 100 grams of melted cheese, 70 grams of carrots in Korean, an egg for omelet, salt, pepper - to taste. This salad can be filled with olive oil or homemade mayonnaise. Here, as they say, the matter of taste and proper nutrition.

To prepare a bento salad, the recipe requires finely chop the cream cheese into small long bars. To him add canned corn and carrots in Korean. Stir the salad and season it with oil or mayonnaise. Then salt, pepper. Although you can not do this, because the carrot already contains a lot of spices.

We spread the salad in one part of the box for lunch bento. The recipe is simple, but it will be much wholesome and tastier if you add an omelet to it. Typically, the Japanese have enough eggs for an omelet, but you can fry even more.

Vegetarian Rolls

Sushi or rolls are the favorite food of the Japanese, and very often they put them in bento. The recipe for cooking vegetarian rolls is very simple and fast. You will need: rice, rice vinegar, nori leaves, Bulgarian pepper, cucumber, avocado, soy sauce.

These rolls are prepared, as well as the usual ones, except that they do not have fat and caloric oil, cream cheese or fish. Vegetarian rolls consist of layers: rice, avocado, cucumber, bell pepper. The layers can be varied, like the kind of rolls. They can be made up rice or wrapped in a sheet of nori.

Rice casserole

Rice and chicken are the main and favorite ingredients, which are quite common in Japanese bento. Light recipes, consisting of fried chicken and boiled rice, do not take much time from the housewives.

To prepare a quick casserole you will need: 100 grams of rice, 200 grams of water, 100 grams of chicken fillet, salt, onions, spices, vegetable oil, 100 grams of fatty sour cream and one egg.

Rice boil in slightly salted water. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. In the meantime, we begin to prepare the rest of the ingredients. Chicken breast should be cut into small cubes. Finely chop the onion. If desired, you can add to the casserole and help items - leftovers in the refrigerator (tomato, mushrooms).

We take deep dishes (a pan, a frying pan or a special form for baking) and lay out rice there. From above a little can be buttered with butter and sprinkled with spices. The next layer is a chicken breast, fried to a ruddy crust. Then lay the rest of the ingredients: onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc. On top layers should be poured with a mixture of fatty cream (sour cream) and eggs.

We bake at a temperature of 200 degrees. Preparation time 10-15 minutes. For a couple of minutes before the end of cooking sprinkle the casserole with grated cheese and let it melt under the heat of the oven.

Stewed chicken breast with vegetables

As we have already noted, chicken with rice is a favorite combination that includes all the simple bento recipes. Chicken Japanese cook, fry in deep-frying and, of course, stew.

For preparation it is required: 150 grams of chicken fillet, vegetables to taste (Bulgarian pepper, carrots, onion, leek, tomato). Salt, spices, ground pepper. Vegetable or olive oil for frying vegetables. Soy sauce.

All ingredients are cut into cubes or small strips. Fry the vegetables and fry for a couple of minutes. Then a chicken breast is added to them, and the whole composition is poured with water mixed with soy sauce.

To put cooked foods in a box of bento, lettuce leaves are needed. Since the rice is always fed to the chicken, it is necessary to weld it and cool it a little until the moment of laying. With the help of leaves of lettuce we partition off two zones: rice and chicken. The Japanese will never make a hodgepodge of products. They will put everything neatly, so that each dish is in its place.

Japanese bento. Reviews

Bento - an excellent alternative to bored thermos and cumbersome containers for lunch. In a box of bentos there is exactly as much food as a person can eat for lunch. Food is not mixed there due to the convenient design of the box and the partitions. The caps of the boxes also fit tightly to the walls, so you can safely, without fear, take even liquid soups and okroshki for dinner.

Bento - very compact lunches. It would seem that it is impossible to get enough of such food. However, it is not. The main secret of bento cooking is the combination of a small amount and very satisfying food. You can take a small rice ball, a piece of oily fish and a few boiled vegetables. Nutritious, healthy, not caloric and very nourishing.