fried food

Pork (or beef) and mushroom roll-ups

meatfritter4inbento.jpg

This is the kind of bento item that you see quite often in homemade Japanese bentos - a simple deep fried fritter or nugget. I haven't featured a lot of these on these pages, because I know that many JustBento readers are leery of deep frying in general. However, they are quite easy to make, especially if you make them for dinner and reserve one or two for next day's bento - or even freeze a few. The general theory behind including a bit of fried food in a bento is to make it just a bit more filling and substantial. And remember, for a bento you only need one or two.

How does the food stay crispy?

I quite like dishes like pan-fried chicken nuggets, Chicken Kijiyaki (tomorrow's bento ^^), Chicken Kara-age or the Fried Shrimp as the meaty part of my bentos... But somehow the fried foods never stays crispy after a few hours in a bento box. I always let everything cool down completely before I put it in the box or before I close the lid but still... I mean, I don't expect my chicken to be super crispy, but it would be nice if it had a little crunch instead of being a little soggy. Does anybody have a trick? Maybe I am doing something wrong?
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