The Tricolored Soboro Bento: My Favorite Home Recipe

As a teacher in Korea, I have the luxury of having freshly prepared, hot, healthy school lunches every day. But a few days ago, my students and I went on a field trip, which meant… lunch packing time! I cooked the first recipe that came to my mind. The tricolored soboro bento. (Bento is lunch box in Japanese.)

My mom is a great cook. And she prepared four children’s bento boxes almost every day for 6 days a week. One of my favorite out of those many lunch boxes was the tricolored soboro bento.

Ingredients (For 2 people)

• 2 eggs
• 200 grams of ground chicken
• some boiled green vegetables (broccoli, sugar peas, spinach, green peas, etc.)
• a small red side dish or dessert (tomatoes, strawberries, umeboshi/pickled plum, etc.)
• 2 servings of rice
• 1 TBSP cooking oil
• 1 TBSP sugar
• 2 TBSP cooking sake
• 2 TBSP soy sauce

Instructions (About 20 minutes)

1. Cook some rice.
2. Boil some green vegetables, cut to bite sizes, and set it aside.
3. Mix the eggs with some salt and pepper or sugar and soy sauce.
4. Put a small frying pan on medium-high heat with some oil.
5. Make some scrambled eggs and set aside to cool.
6. Put the ground chicken, sugar, soy sauce, and sake on the same pan.
7. Stir fry into small pieces until the meat is brown and let it cool.
8. Pack the bento box with rice on the bottom.
9. Put the green vegetables on a third of the rice.
10. Pour the meat and juice/sauce on the remaining two thirds, but pack more meat on half of it.
11. Put the scrambled eggs on the remaining third of the rice.
12. Add the little red side dish or dessert on the side.
13. No need to reheat it when you eat it for lunch later! It’s tasty hot or cold.

This tricolored bento color can be replaced with any other ingredient that goes well with rice! Some people add grilled salmon flakes to it. Hope you enjoy this dish if you get a chance to make it.