3 Healthy Vietnamese Bento Box Lunches 🐝 Day 15 | Honeysuckle

Hey busy bees, happy Sunday, it's Zong and we are back for day 15 of our 30 days of healthy eating and living. We're halfway through, oh my gosh, I can't believe, number one, that we've been able to stick to this for 15 whole days, but I'm also kind of sad that we're halfway done. Anyways, today, as I promised, I'm going to be sharing more bento lunch ideas this week with a Vietnamese spin because I love Vietnamese food and I hope you guys do too. Actually, I know you do too. If you guys are excited to follow along with the next 15 days of our healthy eating and living series, hit that subscribe button and don't forget to give it a big thumbs up and we'll go ahead and get started with our marinade. You can use this with chicken, pork, beef, or if you want to go vegetarian, you can use it with tofu or mushrooms. In a bowl, I'll add one tablespoon of minced shallots, then I'll add one and a half tablespoons of minced lemongrass, half a teaspoon of sesame oil, two teaspoons of sugar, two tablespoons of fish sauce, and one tablespoon of oyster sauce. I'll mix it all up and it's ready to be used as our marinade. So if you guys wanted to go vegetarian, you can cut out the fish sauce and oyster sauce and substitute it for soy sauce. It'll have a little bit of a different flavor, but it still totally works. The lemongrass and shallots just infuses that subtle citrus and savory flavor to our meat and it's so good. All right, so here I will set my marinade aside because I've already marinated all the meats and cooked them off. So here I've already marinated my meat overnight. I have some thin-cut pork chops and then you can also use chicken thigh or even beef. I like using tri-tip, but I've also marinated and sauteed off my mushrooms. Don't worry, I marinated them separately, but I have some shiitake mushrooms and tofu that I've also already cooked off. And then for the grilled meat, the final product looks like this. I went ahead and marinated chicken thigh as well because I'll be using that for our noodle salad and then I have the thinly cut pork chops. Oh, it looks so savory and those grill marks are perfect. You guys, shall we go ahead and assemble our bento? I think so. Let's go ahead with our first one, which is going to be a vegetarian spring roll, but you can use any sort of meat you like if you don't want to go vegetarian. To make the spring rolls, I'm going to start with a sheet of spring roll wrapper. It's basically just rice paper that's been dried and once you moistened it, you can wrap. I also found brown rice paper here. You can find these at any grocery stores nowadays, but I got these at Whole Foods. First we're going to dip the rice paper in a plate of warm water. You don't want to soak the rice paper, you just want to moisten it. Lay it down and in a couple of minutes, it's going to be soft and pliable, but now I'm ready to start filling. I'll start with a lettuce leaf, break it in half. I don't like to use the tough part right here because it makes it really difficult to roll, so I'll just tear it out. Add my herbs. I have some mint and cilantro. Now I'll layer my shredded carrots and shredded cucumbers and then I'll fill it with my tofu and mushrooms. And now our sheet of rice paper is ready to roll. I'll start with the bottom, roll it up, then I'll fold in the sides. Make sure as you're rolling that you kind of take your finger and press everything down so it contains it inside the rice paper. The rice paper is super delicate, so it's usually prone to breaking, which I'm trying really hard not to do. One spring roll done. I'm going to do a brown rice one just so you guys can see how that looks. And here is our brown rice roll. Sometimes the edges don't really fold in, so this is totally okay. I've seen restaurants where they've left it kind of open. Of course, you have to pile it out further, but they've just left it open like this and then they cut it up and serve it kind of like in pieces. And that's totally beautiful too. Let's go ahead and assemble our bento box. When cutting the spring rolls, make sure that your knife is wet so it cuts through a lot easier. Now to assemble our spring rolls bento box, I'm going to layer some lettuce leaves at the bottom and I'll add our spring rolls right on top. This kind of reminds me of like sushi. And then to amp up our meal, I'm going to add some jackfruit. Have you guys ever had jackfruit before? It's becoming a lot more trendy and I noticed that vegans and vegetarians often use jackfruit now in place of meat because it has like a very unique flavor. I grew up eating this just as a regular old tropical fruit, but I'm excited that it's getting a lot of attention now. I found these at Whole Foods. Now I'll just layer some in. Remember a bento box needs to be artful, so I'm taking my time to arrange everything. And then I also found these cool star fruit. It's like a mix between an apple and a melon. It's really cool. It has a fun like crunchy texture and I love adding it because it looks pretty. I'll add one. And then you can't have spring rolls without a dipping sauce. Here I have a peanut dipping sauce, which I showed you how to make in the bento box video last week. So I'll add a link to that in the end card. Squeeze it in and there is our vegetarian spring roll bento box. It's so pretty. All right, guys, let's move on to our next one, which is a noodle salad. Growing up, this was a household staple on the weekends. My mom loved noodle salad, so she would always make this marinade with some kind of meat variation and we always had it with beef. But today I'm going to show you how to make a chicken one, which I've already grilled off. And here is my plate of herbs and vegetables. For a noodle salad, you really could customize it any way you'd like, but I'm sticking with the basics here. I'm starting with some green lettuce. I'll just add a little bit to the bottom. You can add as much or as little as you'd like. I chopped it up finely so that you can pick it up easily with a fork or a chopstick. And then I have some bean sprouts. Bean sprouts provide this really nice crunch and it's kind of watery too. It's really unique. I love having it in my noodle salad. Then I'll layer some herbs. I have some mint and cilantro that I've already chopped and mixed together. To me, you have to have mint in your noodle salad. When I'm going out to a restaurant and if they don't have mint in their noodle salad, that is considered a fail to me. You guys hear Aracy? She's just playing over there. But yeah, the mint really provides just a nice freshness to the noodle salad that is really missing in my opinion if you don't have it. And now I'll just mix the three together. Now I have some rice noodles aka bún. I like using the small kind. It's called fine vermicelli. And I've already cooked it off according to the package's direction. I'll add the whole thing into my bento. And now to finish off the veggies, I have some pickled daikon and carrots. I have a recipe for this as well, so I'll put it in the description box below. And then some freshly shredded cucumbers. Next I'll slide our meat right on top. And finally, I love topping it with this green onion relish. It just adds a little bit of a bite and some extra color. I'm not a fan of green onions, but when served this way, I will eat it. I'll just add a little on top of the chicken and voila! This green onion relish is basically just three stalks of green onions chopped, half a teaspoon of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt, a drizzle of olive oil, and you nuke it for like a minute. So easy. And here is our chicken lemongrass noodle salad. Typically to eat this, you would serve it with a side of fish sauce vinaigrette. Again, I have a video on this, so I will link it in the end. But you could just add it in here. Be sure to cap it though, because you don't want fish sauce spilling all over the place. Actually have a funny story about that. My mom told me when she first moved to the US, she relocated in New Jersey at first. So they were taking a day trip to New York because they have a Chinatown there and that's where she could find fish sauce and Asian food that she's used to. She bought a few bottles of fish sauce and she was walking on the streets of New York and apparently they were clanking together and it broke. When she got to the station, I think it was Penn Station, the police or the security guard was like, what is that smell? And they noticed like a trail of spilled fish sauce following her. It was so embarrassing for her that she just threw everything away, got back on the train and just went home sad without any Asian fish sauce. Actually, when she told me that story, I cracked up because it was ridiculous and I can't imagine how embarrassing that is because if you know how fish sauce smells, it's really potent. Anyways, so moving on to our last one, I will show you a classic Vietnamese rice plate with grilled pork. A Vietnamese rice plate is very common at any Vietnamese deli or restaurant. It's an everyday food that's called gom ye. It's rice, a little bit of vegetables and your choice of meat. Today I'm going to be using brown rice, but first I'm going to layer the bento box with some lettuce. Remember, bento box is an art form. Then with my piping hot brown rice, I will add it to the box. And then for our vegetables, I have cucumbers, tomatoes, star fruit. I'll layer on a few slices of cucumber, making sure that the lettuce still sticks out. Tomatoes, a few slices. And then pickled daikon and carrots gives it a nice acidic tang and crunch. I'll just tuck it right behind the tomatoes for a pop of color. So now I'm going to take my pork chop and layer it right on top of the rice. And with my star fruit, I'm just going to place it right on top of the pork chop. Finally, I'll garnish it with a little bit of our green onion relish and a sprig of cilantro. And there we have our grilled pork rice plate. It's so beautiful. I love all the pops of color. This is going to be a delicious lunch. Oh, and to serve it, you also could serve it as is, or if you want a little bit more flavor, some fish sauce vinaigrette. Mmm. I'm going to be eating all three bento boxes for lunch today. My God, it looks so good. Funny thing with Vietnamese food is that I always get hungry after an hour because it's just so fresh and healthy for you. Anyways, to recap, we made a veggie spring roll bento box with peanut sauce, a lemongrass chicken noodle salad, and a grilled pork rice plate. If you guys are hungry, come over. I'll share. Anyways, let me know which one you would try first, and if you end up making it this week, be sure to tag me at honeysucklebees on Instagram. Tomorrow, I will share all the photos that you guys have been making and sharing with me on Instagram stories, and yeah, tomorrow, actually, also, I will be making stuff from our Target haul yesterday, so be sure to tune in, and I will see you very soon. Bye! Okay, I have to practice my Vietnamese because it's terrible. Uh, okay. This is called, uh, okay. Gói cuốn cháy with mít, and this is called, help me, you guys, what is this called? Uh, okay. Um, bún thịt nướng, bún gà nướng, bún gà nướng, yeah. And then, cơm dĩa với thịt heo, and then cơm dĩa with thịt heo, dĩa thịt heo. Alright guys, I am terrible at my Vietnamese, but that's okay, because I'll keep practicing with you.