How to Make the Best Bento: A Guide for Kids

By Grandma Sandy | August 3, 2022

I have a picky eater grandchild and it’s always a struggle to find him something for lunch. So I decided to let him make a bento lunch. An empowered child is likely to make the best bento, since he would customize it to his taste.

Kids make their own bento. The best bento is the ones they make themselves since they can customize it to suit their tastes. — **Kids shape rice into molds: Little N is making a bullet train; Miss T, a panda.**

Normally, when the kids are visiting, we’d just have a sandwich, a glass of milk, and a piece of fruit. By bringing out the bento paraphernalia lying fallow in a kitchen drawer, lunch was turned into a fun, interactive activity. Kids had a say in what they’d eat, and could express their creativity in their choice of food and decorations.

Of course we need kawaii bento–they had to be super-cute. So that means, cutting up things in diminutive pieces and using vegetable cutters to create pretty shapes.

If you don’t have bento boxes, for the purpose of this summer activity, use shallow cardboard boxes, such as a candy boxes. Line with plastic wrap, waxed paper, or foil. Tape in place, as needed.

Food Picks for Instant Cuteness

A variety of food picks are essential to making the best bento. You can stick them into sandwiches, in chunks of fruit and in cheese cubes. — **Add picks to sandwiches, chunks of vegetables, or pieces of fruit to create instant fun.**

I have a good collection of bento picks for kids. You can find such picks easily in many Japanese specialty stores, as well as online on Amazon, Etsy, and Japanese export websites.

This bento gets its cuteness from eye picks that peek out of a sandwich, cherry tomato, string cheese, avocado ball, and mini cornbread. — **The eyes have it! Eye picks transform a sandwich, chunks of string cheese, cherry tomato, avocado ball, and a mini-corn muffin.**

Making the Best Bento Sandwich

For a sandwich, use soft bread and cut out shapes with a cookie cutter. What’s nice about cookie cutter sandwiches is you can use different shapes for different occasions, such as a heart-shaped cookie cutter for a Valentine’s Day sandwich and a turkey for Thanksgiving. Simple shapes will cut best.

Use cookie cutters to cut ordinary cheese sandwiches in fun shapes to make the best bento. This bento features an elephant and giraffe. — **I made a giraffe and elephant sandwich for Miss T’s preschool lunch by using cookie cutters.**

You can also use a cookie cutter on a grilled cheese sandwich. I make grilled cheese sandwiches using an electric panini press, then the kids can cut out a shape afterwards. The toasted bread is harder to cut through so kids may need some help.

Cheddar cheese panini is cut in triangles and dressed with animal picks. — **This simple Cheddar cheese panini is cut in triangles and decorated with animal picks.**

If you don’t have cookie cutters, simply give the child a table knife and have them cut the sandwich in triangles or strips (soldiers). Sometimes, when I make Little N a PB&J, I cut the sandwich into small rectangles, like building blocks, and let him play with his food by stacking up the blocks in different configurations before consuming. He’s more likely to eat the entire sandwich that way.

Vegetable Cutters for More Cuteness

Multi-colored carrots are cut with flower vegetable cutters. You can use these cutters on firm cheeses, too. — **Multicolored carrots add a pop of color to the bento.**

Vegetable cutters in flower, leaf, and other shapes can be used to add color and make vegetables more appealing. You can use the cutters for cheese, too.

Little N cuts carrots into flowers for his bento lunch. Normally, he might not eat a carrot stick, but who can resist a carrot flower? Especially one he cut himself. — **Little N cuts carrot flowers**. **He might not eat a carrot stick in his bento, but who can resist a carrot flower?**

Onigiri, Japanese Rice Balls

If you’re Japanese, you probably know this one well: rice balls are the foundation of many a bento. If you’ve never made onigiri, but would like to try–and if your child likes rice and nori (dried seaweed sheets) already, this is a winner.

You can find onigiri molds online and in stores that carry Japanese kitchenware. Nori is available in most stores, such as Safeway, Whole Foods, Walmart, and Target

Various molds to make onigiri (rice balls): bunny, panda, bullet train, traditional triangle, and small logs. — **Two halves of onigiri molds: deep side to fill with rice, the shallow side to cover and press into shape.**

If you’ll take the time to cook some rice–a snap if you have a rice cooker–it opens the door to all sorts of possibilities. The onigiri molds don’t tend to have English instructions, but often, there are pictures on the packaging so you can figure it out.

Some molds come with plastic stencils so you can punch out features like eyes, noses, and mouths from nori sheets. My bullet train (shinkansen) mold comes with stencils for windows, head lights, and train engine decorations.

The bullet train onigiri is made from a mold with a plastic stencil to punch out the decals from a nori sheet. — **Bullet train: the mold comes with a plastic stencil to punch out the train decals from a sheet of nori**.

To make onigiri, using an electric rice cooker, cook some Japanese short-grain rice; other types of rice aren’t sticky enough. If you don’t have a rice cooker, follow my instruction for cooking rice on stovetop in the Japanese manner.

When the rice is done, and while it is still hot, fill the onigiri mold halfway, make an indentation with your finger and add filling of your choice in the indentation. Then fill to the top with rice. Put the onigiri mold cover on top and press gently, but firmly, with just enough pressure to help the rice hold its shape. Remove the cover and unmold the onigiri.

Your hands will get sticky, so keep a small bowl of salted water ready and wet your hands before you start; clean off the rice from your fingers by dipping them in the water bowl as you work.

Some Simple Onigiri Fillings:

Drained canned tuna or salmon mixed with mayonnaise
Small cheese cubes or shredded cheese
Katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes; looks like wood shavings) mixed with a little soy sauce
Tofu crumbles–crumble firm tofu and fry in a little oil, then season with soy sauce and mirin

Miss T adds rice into the panda mold using a Japanese rice paddle. — **Miss T fills her panda mold with hot rice using a Japanese rice paddle.**

Go-Withs for the Best Bento

Here are some suggested accompaniments for your bento:

Edamame
Vegetables such as cucumber, carrots, or radishes cut with a pretty vegetable cutter
Cherry tomatoes
Steamed broccoli or cauliflower florets with mayo for dipping (Japanese mayo preferred)
Orange segments, strawberries, or other fresh fruits in season
Raisins, dried cranberries, or other dried fruits
Omelet
Boiled egg, cut around the horizon with zig-zag cuts using a paring knife to make egg flowers
Cheese sticks or string cheese
Fried Spam slices
Hot dog or cocktail sausages, browned in a little oil
Ham or salami slices rolled into cornucopias

The Grandkids’ Bento

Each child designed a wonderful bento. I didn’t have any other bento-ready meat, so I fried them some Spam. Having grown up in Hawaii, we often had Spam in bento lunches. I don’t know what you may think of Spam, but those of us from Hawaii know it’s convenient, shelf-stable, and holds up well, unrefrigerated in the bento box, until lunchtime.

Miss T made this bento herself: panda onigiri, carrot flowers, egg flower, spam, apple chunks and dried cranberries. — **Miss T made this bento: panda *onigir*i, carrot flowers, half a boiled egg, fried Spam slices, dried cranberries, and apple chunks.**

Little N made this bento: spam, orange segments, egg flower, bullet train onigiri, carrot flowers, and dried cranberries. — **Little N made this bento:** Spam slice, orange segments, the other half of Miss T’s egg, train *onigiri*, carrot flowers, and dried cranberries.

The beauty of having kids make their own bento is that they get totally immersed in the process. It’s a fun cooking activity, an outlet for creativity, and a bonus: you don’t have to make lunch!

Of course there is some adult support involved, such as cooking the rice, cutting anything that requires a sharp knife, and so forth. But most of the time will be spent by the kids designing their bento lunch.

Kids eat their bento lunch on the deck. When you've made the best bento, you'll eagerly consume the whole thing. — **Enjoying the fruits of their labor, lunching on the deck.**

Bento for Back-to-School

I used to make each child a bento lunch every Friday that they would pick up on the way to preschool. The reason I volunteered was to try to motivate the picky eaters. (Miss T has outgrown that phase.) I would wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning to have lunch ready by 8.

Part of that time involved decorating the two-tier bento box and photographing it for Instagram. Since the stacked boxes could come apart when jostled in backpacks, I would tie the tiers together with raffia or ribbon like a present, and add a different decorative element each week.

A variety of decorated bento boxes made by grandma for preschool grandkids. — **Some of my bento box decorations: they give a clue as to what’s inside.**

Making bento school lunches doesn’t have to be as time-consuming, of course, if you prep in advance, and work your dinners around having leftovers for the bento the next day. Good leftovers candidates include cooked vegetables, pasta salad, pizza, steak slices, and meatballs.

And no, you don’t need to go crazy to decorate the bento boxes. That’s just me.

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