
Chicken Karaage Bento (Inspired by the Singa Lion)
Level
difficult
Cooking
128 min
Preparation
60 min
Ingredients
Servings
4
Rice | |
Japanese Short Grain Rice | 580 g |
Red Food Colouring | 1⁄8 tsp |
Yellow Food Colouring | 1⁄4 tsp |
Japanese Rice Vinegar | 60 ml |
Sugar | 2 tbsp |
Salt | 1⁄2 tsp |
Water | 580 ml |
Chicken Karaage | |
Boneless Chicken Thigh cubed | 500 g |
Egg | 1 |
Garlic chopped | 1 tbsp |
Sake optional | 1 tbsp |
Potato Starch | 3 tbsp |
Cooking Oil | 200 ml |
Light Soy Sauce | 1 tbsp |
Salt | 1⁄2 tsp |
Pepper | 1 dash |
Garnishing | |
Crabsticks | 10 |
Broccoli small floret | 1 |
Japanese Toasted Seaweed | 1⁄2 |
Lettuce | 7 |
Tomatoes | 4 |
Chicken Ham | 2 slices |
Lemon | 1 slice |
How to cook
Prepare the Rice
- Wash and cook the rice in the following portions:
- White rice: 435g of rice, 435ml of water.
- Bright orange rice: 145g of rice, 145ml of water, red and yellow food colouring.
- Add rice vinegar, sugar and salt to a pot and heat just until sugar is completely dissolved. Allow to cool.
- Once the rice is cooked, add in cooled vinegar solution.
Prepare the Chicken Karaage
- Marinate chicken with garlic, light soy sauce, salt, sake, pepper and egg, mixing well. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for 2 hours, best overnight.
- Coat chicken pieces evenly with potato starch.
- Heat up oil over medium-high heat. Deep fry until light golden (around 1½ minutes), flipping midway.
- Remove and place on wire rack to cool and drain excess oil.
- Prepare a second deep fry to purge excess oil and create a crispier skin. Heat up the oil over high heat.
- Fry for around 1 minute until the chicken turns a nice golden colour.
Decorating
- Steam the crabstick and broccoli until soft.
- Shape the Japanese rice to form Singa’s face, hands, t-shirt, and heart. Wrap some rice in cling film and compress lightly into a ball, then shape into the various elements.
- Unroll the red section of crab sticks and wrap them around the heart shaped rice ball.
- Cut the Japanese seaweed using the provided template to achieve the details for Singa’s face and the words.
- Arrange the ingredients to form the bento.
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