I am really proud of Mrs. Bee’s bentos, and bentos in general.  But sometimes I feel like I have to defend the honor of the bento!  Bentos often get judged or mocked in Western culture as a time suck, and as something that only Martha Stewart-types would make the time to do.  I am here to throw down my half-Japanese card and tell you that bentos are a very efficient way to pack a lunch!

This post was triggered by some comments I overheard recently about bentos.  I actually got pretty emotional, which is pretty rare for me.  I realized that to me, bentos are more than they may appear in their cute little packages.  Bentos are actually a very common lunch of Japan, and the philosophy behind them is deeply woven into the fabric of Japanese cuisine and culture.

I will admit that if you’re not familiar with Japanese cuisine and culture, then bentos can seem a little insane.  Instead of just packing one big entree and some snacks, it might look like a bento requires you to prepare 3-5 different things to eat.  Then the bento-maker has to spend even more time making the boxed lunch look pretty.  But that’s actually not how bentos work in Japan.  That’s because the philosophy of Western and Eastern meals is pretty different.

Western meals often center on a single dish known as the “main course” (in America, it’s sometimes called an entree).  Here’s how Wikipedia describes a main dish: “The main dish is usually the heaviest, heartiest, and most complex or substantive dish on a menu. The main ingredient is usually meat or fish; in vegetarian meals, the main course sometimes attempts to mimic a meat course. It is most often preceded by an appetizer, soup, and/or salad, and followed by a dessert.”

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Japanese meals are a bit different.  A meal will still have a main carb (usually rice) and a main protein (okazu, the main side dish that goes with the rice).  But meals will also have a ton of other side dishes.  For example, a typical Japanese breakfast will be made up of lots of little dishes — many more than are usually eaten in a Western breakfast: “Traditonal Japanese breakfast consists of steamed rice, miso (soy bean paste) soup, and side dishes, such as grilled fish, tamagoyaki (rolled omelet), pickles, nori (dried seaweed), natto, and so on.”

In Korea, these side dishes are called banchan.  You may recognize banchan as all those little plates of food you get for free at Korean restaurants.  The most famous banchan is probably kimchi, the fermented vegetables (often cabbage) known for being spicy.  Japanese love to eat kimchi too, although we tend to eat it much less spicy than Koreans.  I like my kimchi very spicy though, which is one reason I was able to marry a Korean.

There are a million side dishes besides kimchi, each of which many families will have pre-prepared in their fridges (or have bought already pre-made by a local store).  Because these side dishes are often hanging out in your fridge for a long time, they are often pickled (which results in a low pH that kills most bacteria).  This is why so many Korean and Japanese side dishes are pickled/fermented and thus salty/sour!  You can’t make and store so many side dishes and have them not kill you, unless you’ve found a way to preserve the food from going bad.  (I think Koreans use more side dishes than the Japanese actually, and wonder if that’s why sometimes it seems like more Japanese side dishes tend to be fresh and not pickled.)

Anyway, all this background is just to give some cultural context to Japanese cuisine and how side dish-centric it can be.  To bring it back to the bento, a bento is often made up of rice, a protein, and a number of little side dishes.  These side dishes are often little things that you make or buy once a week (or longer), and then drop into individual meals.  So, making a bento doesn’t mean making 4-5 little meals.  It’s really grabbing a carb and a protein, and then adding some side dishes that you already have lying around.

That’s why making bentos doesn’t really take much more time than packing a lunch.  The side dishes are the key.  They bring your bento to life with variety and flavor.

Bentos are part of a philosophy of cuisine and food preparation that is very practical and time-efficient.  Imagine making a bento during the Meiji period in Japan (which started around the time of the US Civil War), before refrigeration was widespread.  You would have a bunch of pickled side dishes pre-made (or pre-bought), and pack that into your bento box.  Boom, lunch is served.

I guess after writing this all out, I can see why bentos can seem so weird to the casual Western observer.  If you’re not used to a side dish-centric food culture, then you might get distracted by all the flash of modern bentos — from cutting cheese into stars, to sticking toothpicks into his mini hotdogs (both of which Charlie loves and help him eat better, by the way).  Bentos are about much more than that: they are a whole philosophy of food and food preparation that goes back centuries.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve to say about bentos.  There’s a reason they have been around for centuries!  They are a very practical and time-efficient way to pack a healthy and hearty lunch. Viva la bentos!