On a cold winter day, who doesn’t enjoy a nice hot bowl of soup? But the question is, how much trouble is it to add soup to bento, and is it worth it?
Bento foods are generally healthy, tasty, and most of all fairly dry. Any sauces that go with the dishes are generally left off so the food doesn’t get soggy before you eat it. Soup is the complete opposite of this mindset.
When you add soup to a bento lunch, you need to have a thermos or other special soup container. It needs to be well insulated to keep the soup hot until you eat it. The container must also have a tight sealing lid so the soup doesn’t spill out. These containers are generally easy to find, but can be quite expensive for a quality unit. If you don’t buy quality, you may experience cracks in your lid or insulation lining which require you to throw out the old unit and buy a new one.
Preparing good soup can be very time consuming, sometimes more so than a typical bento. For example if you are making homemade chicken noodle soup, you need to thaw and prepare, and cut up each of the chicken, carrots, celery, and any other ingredients you add. Then you need time to let it all simmer and the flavors mingle. The end result is totally awesome, but the time to get there can be the showstopper on a busy morning.
The most important question is - how do your lunch-eaters like the soup you send? That is always the important question with any lunch. If the person doesn’t like it or eat it, there is no point sending it. My response has generally been an enthusiastic one. I”m not sure if its all because of the quality of the soup, or more because its a rare treat and special.
In my eyes, if you have the time to make good soup it is always worth it. However, if you don’t make soup very often or you use store bought soup, it might not be worth investing in an expensive soup container to start with.
Stay tuned for the next article as we go from soup to nuts. (This blog has got everything, man!)