Rice bento

I don't always take photos of my bento lunches these days. Sometimes I just don't have the time or inclination, and sometimes they don't look all that different from the ones I have posted before. But here are some rice-based bento that I made recently:



Mushroom rice, steamed gai lan and carrots (tossed in sesame oil and light soy sauce), and a small container of kimchi (spicy Korean pickled vegetables).




The warmer weather brought on a craving for simpler and cooler food like sushi and onigiri. This was a very simple bento made last week, with onigiri, little beef patties and edamame.

I made the onigiri with rice and a bonito and nori furikake mix, which eliminated the need for soy sauce (although that meant no cute sauce containers). I used to make onigiri at night, wrap them in cling film, pack them in containers and keep in the fridge overnight, I think I might just make them in the morning from now on. Although the cling wrap help, some bits of the rice do tend to harden a little and the texture doesn't taste as good as freshly made.



What I did was place the leftover rice from dinner in a container and place in the fridge. In the morning, I reheated the rice in the microwave for about 45 seconds so that it got nice and hot, mixed in the furikake and made the onigiri with moulds. It was pretty quick and meant no cling wrap and fresher tasting onigiri for lunch with no refrigeration.



Another simple soboro bento for lunch, with pork, red peppers and green bean over rice. This was packed the night before and kept in the fridge, and then reheated in a microwave at lunch time. I need to chop the red peppers more finely next time so that the pieces look more even for the bento as a whole. I do like how the colours turned out in this. Spinach is often used for soboro but I find it can get a bit wet over time and it is not good to have moisture gathering with other ingredients in the fridge overnight (food safety), so I chose green beans for this instead.