Back-to-school lunch ideas: Here’s 15 healthy bento box ideas and inspirations. Also includes food safety, decoration tips and all you need to know about bento making!
School is now back in session. If you are a parent like me, you know how packing lunches for your children can be a daily challenge. That’s why bento boxes are the best solution for school lunches (and work lunches). In Japan, bento boxes are packed with care and love to accompany the little ones to school every day.
With the various smart compartments, bento boxes allow you to pack a healthy, perfectly portioned, exciting and wholesome meals. Bento making is almost like an art form itself. For the crafty parents and kids, you get to enjoy the creative process of putting lunches together. When lunch boxes are presented creatively, you know you never have to worry about untouched foods when the children come home.
The best thing about bento? You can repurpose weekend preps and dinner leftovers throughout the week. Since bento boxes are reusable and eco-friendly, you can eliminate the use of anything plastic too.
Here I’ve rounded up 15 bento box ideas and inspirations for packing healthy school lunches that could also work at the office. For beginners, there are many helpful guides in this roundup on how to pack healthy lunch, food safety, decoration tips and more. Let’s get started!
15 Back to School Easy Bento Box Ideas & Recipes
1. Bento Tutorial 101
New to making Bento? Here are some helpful tips and tools on how to make healthy and colorful bento for you get started.
2. Karaage Bento
Japanese bite-size fried chicken with tamagoyaki (rolled omelette), broccoli, tomato, sautéed spinach, and onigiri rice balls all packed in a classy bento. This Karaage Bento is literally a box filled with your child’s favorite foods.
3. Teriyaki Chicken Meatball Bento
Delicious and tender teriyaki chicken meatballs packed along with steamed rice, ham flower, fruits, crab salad, egg, and broccoli in a stylish bento box. This is a sure win for school lunch!
4. Egg Salad Sandwich Bento
Have a busy week ahead? This simple and delicious egg salad sandwich bento can be ready in minutes! Just cook up some hard-boiled eggs over the weekend for quick assembly.
5. Sanshoku (Tri-Color) Bento
Beautiful bento tastes twice as good. The bright colors and artistic composition of this Sanshoku Bento will make lunchtime the best of your child’s school day.
6. Honey Soy Sauce Chicken Bento
Sweet and flavorful chicken drummettes bento with sautéed cabbage, Tamagoyaki, tomatoes, and fresh fruits. Enjoy with onigiri for a better-than-take-out lunch.
7. Onigiri (Japanese Rice Balls) Bento
Filling and nutritious, Origini Bento is a great snack choice for after-school activities. These Japanese rice balls are portable and they make lunch on-the-go a cinch.
8. Onigirazu Bento
Tired of the usual sandwiches or rice dish? Onigirazu (Japanese rice sandwich) makes a super fun bento box lunch! Again, tap into your leftovers and turn them into delicious nori-wrapped rice sandwich. Think Teriyaki Salmon Onigirazu, Spam Onigirazu, Bulgogi Onigirazu, Chicken Katsu Onigirazu, Ginger Pork Onigirazu and more.
9. Piggy Spam Musubi Bento
This Hawaiian inspired Piggy Spam Musubi Bento is flat out adorable and super fun to eat. Don’t forget to throw in colorful vegetables and tropical fruits to the lunch box.
10. Chicken Teriyaki Bento
Bento is just another effective formula of meal prepping, where dinner is repurposed into lunch the next day. In this bento, you’ll find leftover chicken teriyaki, pickled cucumber, apple bunnies, tomatoes, lettuce and furikake seasoning on top of rice – all laid out nicely for an appetizing lunch.
11. Cute Bento Recipes
Little kids can never say no to cute animal sandwich bento. You can expect their eyes light up when they see their favorite animal characters in the lunch box. Keep the ingredients simple. Choices like cheese, ham, eggs, fruits and cut vegetables are always popular. Better still, have them pack the bento together for some bonding and craft time. They will enjoy the creativity and the food that is made together with love.
12. Soboro (Chicken & Egg) Bento
Colors play a big factor in enticing kids to eat their lunch! Made with ground chicken seasoned with the slightly sweet soy sauce, soboro rice bowl is a popular dish for kids. I like to double the batch of the chicken and scrambled eggs for dinner, then pack them up in bento for my kids’ school lunch. To add colors, don’t forget to include some fruits and their favorite vegetables like green peas, snow peas, spinach, etc.
13. Gyoza Bento
Kids love dumplings! The good news is dumplings makes a delicious bento box idea. If you happen to make gyoza for dinner, save some for their bento box lunch. No time to make gyoza from scratch? Grab the frozen ones from Trader Joe’s! Even super parents rely on frozen foods once in a while. You can mix and match the ingredients from your leftovers and fresh-cut vegetables or fruits. Here we have gyoza, cherry tomatoes, blanched broccoli, tamagoyaki, cucumber, and furikake seasoned rice. When you have everything prepared in big batches for the week, bento making is a total breeze.
14. Tonkatsu Bento
Crispy tonkatsu is a family favorite that I make regularly. You can choose to shallow fry the pork cutlet or bake it for a lighter version. For the extra pieces, pack them into the school lunch box, along with broccoli, tomato, golden kiwi and oranges.
15. Cute Octopus Bento
This adorable Octopus Bento is very popular amongst the Japanese children! It’s easy to see why. Imagine the child’s reaction when he/ she opens up the lunch box and being greeted by octopus-shaped sausage, broccoli, grape, tomato, and seasoned rice balls.
Additional Tips on How to Make Bento Lunch Box
1. How to Make Bento Video Tutorial
This bento video tutorial gives you plenty of helpful tips and tools on how to make healthy and colorful Bento Boxes.
2. Side Dishes For Bento
The secret to a beautiful and wholesome bento is to add side dishes with various colors. Learn how to decorate the school lunch box with these quick and easy bento side dishes.
3. Food Safety Tips For Bento
There are a few important tips to properly pack your bento. Follow these simple tips for food safety.
More Delicious Bento Box Ideas
I hope you have fun packing bento for your children. If you are looking for more bento box recipes, click here to get inspiration! The key to packing bento is to switch up protein, grains, vegetables, fruits or healthy snacks, I promise your kid’s school lunch will never be boring again.
Hi! Thanks for your recipes. I notice that you use different bento boxes in your pictures. Do you have a recommendation for any one in particular that can be easily opened by big and little kids?
Hi M J, Thank you for reading Nami’s post!
Here are Nami’s bento-making tools and her favorite bento boxes.
How about LunchBots or MONBENTO?
https://www.amazon.com/shop/justonecookbook/list/276VBKGLE0D7D
If your little ones can twist and open the container, THERMOS or Zojirushi is perfect for keeping food warm until lunchtime.
Either way, we recommend choosing the size that kids can easily finish eating.
Here is another helpful post from Nami.
https://www.justonecookbook.com/bento-faq/
We hope this helps!
Hi Nami! Do you have to put an ice pack for these bento lunches when taken to school for lunch? Or food will be okay without it and just eaten in room temp? Thanks!
Hi May! Thank you very much for reading Nami’s post!
It depends on where you live, but we recommend using an ice pack to keep the food safe.
We hope this helps!
Hi Nami – I want to thank you for presenting so many authentic Japanese recipes and videos; I have always felt that there are not enough resources for learning about traditional Japanese foods online, but you have answered the call! Your videos and recipes are easy to understand and they seem to always turn our perfectly. These bento box lunches are a great example of your work and I look forward to mixing up lunches for my daughter with this inspiration.
Yours Truly,
The Healthy Dad
Hi Arthur! Thank you so much for your kind and encouraging words. They meant so much to me. You also seem like you started sharing your online food journey too. Good luck! 🙂
Can this food be kept hot
Hi Susan! It can be kept warm if you use a thermal lunch box or jar. But in general, bento is supposed to be enjoyed at room temperature. 🙂
I love your recipes, the justonecookbook is so easy to use, and looks so pleasing to the eyes.
When you look at the top of the page you have;
RECIPE INDEX, COURSE, DIETARY, INGREDIENT, PREPERATION, TYPE, FAVORITE, HOW TO.
I love this, it’s so easy to find what I am looking for and if i don’t find it there I easily find it at the bottom of the page where you have Browse popular topics. I did however notice 1 thing I couldn’t find unless I actually searched for it. Your Bento recipes. So I was wondering if it was possible to add BENTO as a link under your COURSE in the top of the page? so it becomes like this:
COURSE:
APPETIZER
BENTO
BEVERAGE
BREAKFAST
DESSERT
ENTREE
SALAD
SNACK
SOUP + STEW
This is only a suggestion so that it’s easier to find school lunch box, or back to school food, or lunch box, bento, whatever you want to call it. A easy to find for all parents who make their children home made lunch boxes, and/or students who want to make their own lunch boxes.
I don’t have much of a imagination in the way of lunch, I live in Norway and apart from amazing warm dinner time, we eat a lot of bread, out lunches are not very balanced and so when I stumbled over the concept Japanese Bento, I was so surprised that lunch could look so good. My normal lunch is 2 slices of dry bread.. Bentos are amazing and should be advertised as it provides such a balanced meal.
This is again just my suggestion since I was so blown away by the amazing lunch boxes and though others might find an amazing concept as well. Please don’t feel pressured to do this if you do not want to. I just felt I had to ask.
Thank you for sharing your wonderful recipes her on justonecookbook, I am very grateful.
Hi Karen! Thank you for your suggestions! I wasn’t aware that bento wasn’t listed, so I’ve added Bento under “Favorite”. 🙂 Thank you for your kind feedback. I’m glad you discovered bento making! 🙂
Nice bento! Just wondering are they served cold ? Since they are supposed to be eaten at school? Or how do you keep them warm for food safety reason?
Hi Yvette! Japanese bento is always served warm. Even at the office, some people don’t microwave it (after all years of eating bento during schooling). We use ingredients and food that taste good at room temperature (hence seasonings tends to be stronger/saltier). IF you want to keep your beneto warm, make sure it stays warm all the time. Use a thermos to make sure food is well kept hot/warm. 🙂
Hi Nami, I love bento boxes but if I make it, I have to make it the night before. I don’t think you heat it up or warm it up when you eat it, do you? Then the rice can be drier and stone cold. Do you always cook and prepare them in the morning?
Jo
Hi Jo! Rice gets really hard when it’s stored in the fridge. So I do not recommend to do that… but if you REALLY have no other choice, then wrap the bento box with a thick kitchen towel and see if you can prevent the bento to be too cold but keep cool. That’s what I do when I make sushi and have to keep them in the fridge, but I don’t want my rice to be cold.
In my case, I usually use leftovers or frozen food that I cooked previously, so I always reheat using a microwave, toaster oven, or in a frying pan (depends on food). I rarely cook something from fresh, maybe except for Tamagoyaki when I don’t have the frozen batch. Or some frozen veggies to stir fry to pack in one area that needs just one more dish… Japanese moms (in Japan) deep fry in the morning for bento etc, but I don’t. 😀 Unless we eat rice for breakfast, I reheat my frozen rice in the microwave, and pack in the lunchbox. It’s easy, BUT the food needs to be cool before closing the lid, so I have to wake up early for that (I prepare bento before preparing breakfast). Hope this answered to your question?
Yes you did, thank you so much! You are always so good at responding to questions and providing detailed information, much appreciated!
My family and I just went o Tokyo for the first time. One of my inexplicable desires was to eat a bento on a train in Japan, and I did on the Romance Car from Hakone back to Tokyo. It looked gorgeous and was much more delicious than I expected. It was one of the highlights of my trip, hahahaha….
Jo
Hi Jo! I can totally relate as I look forward to eating obento (and snacks) on a long-ride train (I mean, it’s bento that you don’t have to prepare and so many kinds!!!). 🙂
Glad I answered your question. Your words are too kind. I actually struggle to respond “in time”…. many people wish to get my answer right away (while/before they are cooking) but I am always behind and emails just accumulate… :/ I’ll do my best!
What bento lunch box would you recommend for young kids to take to school??
Hi Heidi! When my kids were smaller, I was using Japanese lunch box (smaller and cuter). Once they are in elementary school, I pack in LunchBots.
https://amzn.to/2lAfOrS
Hope that helps…
Hi, i’m from Brazil and i love asian food, this site is amazin! tonight i gonna make gyoza dough!
Thank you Barbara! Hope you enjoy(ed) the gyoza dough! 🙂
Hi Nami,
Can you talk about these Bento box you used here? They look small which will be suitable for my preschooler. thanks
Hi Zoie! I’ve used these bento boxes for my kids when they were younger. The small bento boxes are from Japan (or you can buy online or Japanese supermarkets etc) and the lid has a character (Thomas etc). 😀
I just love bento, wish we had heard of them when i was a child although my mum was not into cooking so i still would have probably gotten a boring sandwich.
Hi Linda! So happy to hear you like the concept for bento. I think even sandwich makes it wonderful bento too. But need other than sandwich to make it look appetizing etc though. My bento was always simple growing up – no character bento etc but my mom added different colors and textures to make it more interesting and delicious. 🙂