Event Recap: Bento Workshop

This Bento Workshop was co-hosted by JETAA Alaska, JETAA Portland, and JETAABC , making it an international event! This was the fourth workshop in their annual JETAA Bento Workshop series which was hosted both virtually and in-person simultaneously. They’ve shared these recipes so even if you missed this event, you can try making these onigiri at home.

The webinar was led by Amanda Oumiya (Sapporo 2012-2014), who started cooking Japanese food as a housewife and mother preparing bento for her children everyday while they were in preschool. She founded K&Lbento as a way to share her bento journey and teach others how to cook bento. Amanda provided a brief history of onigiri and their role in Japanese lunch culture. She then guided participants through the act of making their own onigiri, providing helpful tips and tricks along the way. In the words of JETAABC’s Karmila Harder, “it was an onigiritastic event.”

Fun fact: Onigiri in the Nara period (710-794) could sometimes weigh up to 1.3lbs (600g)!