It‘s easy to pack a delicious Tonkatsu Bento lunch at home with a crispy pork cutlet leftover from last night‘s dinner. In this guide, I‘ll show you how to add steamed rice, salad, and fresh vegetables for a yummy Japanese lunch box to go. You‘ll want to finish every bite!
Welcome to my new series: Bento! Bento (弁当, bentō), or most of us would say Obento (“o” for honorific term), is a single-portion home-packed meal or takeout. I debated the idea whether to start this bento series the whole summer. The reason is that I wouldn’t call myself a “bento expert” and I don’t think I am creative or artistic enough to make character bentos that kids are crazy about. However, I became inspired by many amazing bentos that talented bloggers shared and now that I need to pack my son’s lunch everyday, I decided to share my “normal” bento that he loves on Just One Cookbook.
I hope my SIMPLE bento can inspire some of you to make healthy and delicious lunch for your loved ones and I hope you will enjoy taking this journey with me. You might see a super cute character bento on my blog one day (or maybe not…haha).
I want to briefly mention that I’m making this bento for my 6-year-old son who started 1st grade this year. The goal is to just pack enough food for him to try finishing his lunch during the 30-minute lunch break. He’s a slow eater (did I spoil him at home?), and most days he cannot finish his whole lunch box. So please keep in mind that my bento is made specifically for my son’s need. Now let’s begin!
Previous Dinner was:
Lunch Next Day:
- Tonkatsu Bento
- A medium size box of fruits: chopped up apples, golden kiwis, and oranges.
- Water bottle
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Tonkatsu Bento
Ingredients
- cooked Japanese short-grain rice (enough to fill half of your bento box)
- tonkatsu (pre-made; leftovers work well; see how to make my Tonkatsu or Baked Tonkatsu recipes)
- tonkatsu sauce (you can make my homemade Tonkatsu Sauce recipe)
- cherry tomatoes
- lettuce
- red radish
- broccoli (pre-blanched; see Notes; see how to freeze blanched vegetables for bento ahead of time)
- salad dressing (of your choice; you can make Japanese salad dressing or yuzu dressing at home)
Instructions
- Before You Start: For the steamed rice, please note that ¾ cup (150 g, 1 rice cooker cup) of uncooked Japanese short-grain rice yields 2¼ US cups (330 g) of cooked white rice. See how to cook short-grain rice with a rice cooker, pot over the stove, Instant Pot, or donabe.
- Fill up half of the bento box with cooked Japanese short-grain rice. Let it cool so that the hot/warm rice will not warm up the other cool food.
- Meanwhile, take out your leftover tonkatsu from the refrigerator and bake it for a few minutes in a toaster oven until it‘s warm.
- Place the tonkatsu on top of the cooling rice and drizzle tonkatsu sauce on top (or put it in a separate sauce container).
- Wash the cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and red radish and pat dry. Cut if necessary. Place nicely in the bento box along with some blanched broccoli.
- Pour salad dressing in a sauce container (I bought at a local Daiso, a Japanese dollar shop).
- Let the contents cool down completely before closing the bento box.
This has probably been asked elsewhere, but, is it necessary to heat the food up if you’re just going to cool it down again..? Does it make a significant taste/texture difference to heat then cool? Thanks!
Hi Maddie, Thank you for trying Nami’s bento recipe.
Reheating cooked food kills bacteria, and we do it when packing the lunch box (Bento) for safety reasons.
Here is the post where Nami explains more about it. https://www.justonecookbook.com/food-safety-tips-for-bento/
We hope this helps!
I love your recipes! My son is in grade one and loves rice with everything! I would usually pack rice and proteins (and maybe a veggie or two which would always end up uneaten lol) in a thermos. I want to try making this tonkatsu recipe this time, in a bento, for a nicer presentation. My question is do you serve the rice cold on your son’s bento? (and maybe tips on food safety, rice should be safe to be eaten when it gets cold, right?) I usually prepare his lunch in the morning so it would be 4-5 hours before he opens his lunch. Thank you.
Hi Gina! Japanese bento is always eaten at room temperature, so we are used to eating cold in a way, only from a lunch box. My kids are also used to eating room temp bento so I usually pack (reheated and cooled) bento ingredients in their lunch boxes in the morning. And yes, it’s safe to eat after 4-5 hours. Just make sure no condensation created after closing the bento box lid. I’m happy to help. Let me know if something is not clear. 🙂
Hey Nami! I’m so grateful you started a bento series, I constantly look at your bentos for inspiration for my fiancé’s bento. I like that you don’t do charaben because I am not that interested in it; maybe when I have kids I will be but the cute accessories are more than enough and I care more about the taste of the food than it looking like mickey mouse or hello kitty..they’re great looking, but whenI was a kid I would feel so guilty about eating cute things..I think now I would feel even more guilty because they’re too cute! Maybe it’s just me, because I felt guilty biting off gummy bear parts I had to eat them whole so I wouldn’t feel like I was hurting something..
Don’t worry, my mom complained SO BAD when my brother and I were young that we ate too slowly..sometimes it would go to two hours.. I think it’s an Asian kid thing cos my American friends did not have that problem! LOL!
For some reason now I eat almost as fast as my mom..now I wish I ate a lot slower! I even eat faster than my dad and I’m like come on!! Than my dad??!! I’m really working on eating slower now isn’t it silly and ironic?
xx
Catt
Hi Catt! I really wish that I could keep up everything on my blog – bento series is one of things that I haven’t updated for a while… I’ve been focusing on YouTube channel lately and I haven’t had the time to work on bento lately….feeling bad! I really hope to come back with bento recipes regularly though.
I’m the same way – I really like the regular bento. My mom never made character bento and I probably wished sometimes that my bento was cuter. But personally, I can’t stand the cold slice cheese on top of rice (this is just me – if the cheese is grilled I’m completely okay) so I am not into cutting cheese and all that stuff to create character (I made one character bento recently, but you see, I used sandwich to put cheese on top. LOL). Anyway, I’m more interested in packing neatly, colorfully, and look like adult bento box (even for kids. haha).
My kids eat sloooooow – I think they are better than when this post was originally published (2 years ago), but still they could eat faster…. But yeah like you said, I won’t worry too much. You made a really good point!
Thank you so much for writing! I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
What a beautiful bento! Looking forward to seeing more in your bento series now that I have to pack school lunches! Question: Where did you buy the tiny container for the yuzu dressing?
Hi Plumeria! I bought several different sauce containers at Ichibankan in San Francisco or South SF, but you can buy at Amazon.