Artfully arranged with sweet ground chicken, salmon flakes, scrambled egg, and strawberries, this colorful Sanshoku Bento turns a simple school lunch or work lunch exciting.
Sanshoku Bento is very similar to Soboro Bento which I had previously shared on Just One Cookbook. The bento includes ground chicken seasoned with the slightly sweet soy sauce flavor, served on top of steamed rice with scrambled egg. The only difference here is I have also included flaked salmon. Because there are three colors, this bento is known as “Sanshoku (three-color)” Bento.
On the previous day, dinner was: Sanshoku Donburi
Sometimes I add one more color to enhance the looks of Soboro Don. This time I defrosted and bake Japanese Salted Salmon from the freezer. Once it’s cooled, I break up the salmon into flakes. Now your third topping is ready.
Lunch Next Day:
- Sanshoku Bento
- Strawberries
Whether your packing lunches for the kids, or for yourself, Sanshoku Bento is one of the easiest ideas for a wholesome, delicious bento menu.
If you are new to packing lunches and interested in making bento-style lunch, check out my short video below on How To Make Bento.
Watch How to Make Bento (お弁当の作り方)
Here are some helpful tips and tools on how to make healthy and colorful Bento.
Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want to look for substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.
Sign up for the free Just One Cookbook newsletter delivered to your inbox! And stay in touch with me on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram for all the latest updates.
Sanshoku Bento
Ingredients
- 1 serving cooked Japanese short-grain rice
- soboro don
- salted salmon (shredded)
- shredded nori seaweed (kizami nori)
- strawberries
Instructions
- Pack rice in ⅔ of bento box and put salmon flakes, scramble egg, and ground chicken on top of the rice. Sprinkle shredded nori.
- Add strawberries in ⅓ of the bento.
- Cool down completely before closing the bento box.
Can i just say, I think what you do here is amazing! It’s really motivated me to make my daughters kindy/school lunch packs more exciting and interesting for her. Can’t believe I haven’t found justonecookbook.com sooner!
Hi Shonya! Thank you for your kind words! I’m glad you enjoy my blog. Well, you didn’t miss much. I only have been blogging for 3 years. 🙂
I actually wanted to ask a question and I’m hoping this is the right way to go about doing so. I work a lot of hours throughout my week and it would be easier for me to prepare multiple bento meals and other meals on one day for a whole week. However I didn’t know if the bento meals you have on your website would be ok to leave in the refrigerator for a week and still taste ok or if these recipes are more for a day to day setting. Also I just wanted to be sure bento meals (even with fish and chicken) are intended to be eaten cold correct? Again I hope it wasn’t a bother for me to ask my questions via comments. I like the recipes you have on this site though and you are very thorough and helpful for someone who wants to try eating more genuine Japanese cuisine, thank you.
Hi Andrew! Thank you for your questions! So first of all, I have some bento related pages here to start:
https://www.justonecookbook.com/how_to/bento-how-to/
A few things to point out.
1) Bento is usually eaten at room temperature (not cold). So we pick ingredients and food that taste good at this temperature. Also, season slightly stronger (saltier/sweeter etc).
2) Rice gets hard when it’s stored in the refrigerator. So if your lunch box involves rice, this is something you think about. Because of this reason, I do not pack lunch previous night, and always pack rice in the morning. I freeze my rice (you can find in my How to page), so in the morning, I reheat the individual portion rice in the microwave and then pack into lunch box. It works when you pack rice exact same portion as your lunch box.
3) I’m not sure if this bento is for you – or for your children, etc and how the lunch box is kept till lunch time. If it’s kept in the refrigerator whole time, and maybe if you microwave at work, etc, I don’t think we don’t have to worry too much about food safety. Food should be kept at the chilled temperature to store – and should not go warm, cold, warm, cold etc. Should be kept at chilled temp whole time before reheating. But if this is for kids, and no refrigeration, sometimes kept outside the classroom under sun, etc etc… I think it’s best to reheat (and kill possible/invisible bacteria on food) and pack in the morning… so it really depends.
Hope that helps (or my How to pages). 🙂