EASY & HEALTHY QUINOA BOWLS
I know a lot of people that are part of this channel either have roommates or you have a family and you aren't all on the same diet, and so I wanted to kind of share some strategies and some specific types of recipes that you can make that I call protein flexible, meaning you make the same base and you can just swap the proteins in and out.
The benefit of making meals like this is that it cuts down on your own cooking time. A lot of times, they can be meal prepped, and then basically if you're living with somebody who isn't plant-based or who is wanting something different they still are satisfied with the meal that they're eating and they're not feeling like they're forced into eating beans or tofu or something like that.
So on my list I have six different types of recipes that you can make that are what I call protein flexible. So we'll kind of talk through all of them, and again, all of these can be meal prepped, and hopefully this will save you some time and some headache and hassle cooking at home for multiple diets.
So the first thing that I always recommend is the bowl-type meal, and for me this is something like a Buddha bowl or a roasted veggie bowl, and basically you cook a bunch of vegetables, and then you cook a protein on the side.
So maybe you'd be roasting sweet potatoes, maybe you'd be making mashed potatoes. You basically have a starch, you'd have a green, you'd have some sort of other type of vegetable, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and then you'd also have your protein.
So the benefit of a meal like this is that it's super customizable. You can use any type of vegetable that you have on hand. I'll link some of my favorite recipes down below, and then for the protein because it's separate from the rest of the meal that can be swapped in and out.
So you could have baked chicken along with tofu or chickpeas or steak or shrimp or salmon, and basically you can just have whatever type of protein people want on the side, and then the main bulk of the meal is the same.
So that is my number one. I think it's the easiest way to cook. It's how I personally cook almost every single night at home how I accommodate me and Matt who does not eat vegan, and we almost always find a way to have pretty much the same dinner.
The second type of recipe that I have on my list is pizza. I personally love pizza. I mean who doesn't love pizza? And pizza is another one of those things that is super customizable based on what people want.
So what I like to do is just make different doughs. So I basically have like one batch of dough, and either I split the pizza in half so half of it, the toppings are mine, half of the toppings are his, or we just make individual crusts.
So I have made a ton of gluten-free and vegan pizzas on the channel and on my blog. I have my five ingredient quinoa pizza crust. I have a quinoa flower pizza crust. I have an almond flour pizza crust.
So basically you can use any of those as your base, and then you can swap with different toppings in and out. You basically you can do like a topping bar. So you could have a bunch of sliced veggies, different types of cheeses, and then you could do different toppings.
So it might seem like extra work, but it's really actually not that bad, especially if you make the same crust for everybody, and then people can just pick and choose their toppings. The third thing that I recommend, third type of recipe is pasta.
Pasta dishes are one of my favorite meals of all time. I seriously love pasta, and I make pasta at least once or twice a week, and I almost always make like the same base, and then we swap protein things in and out.
So I actually just cook for me since I'm mostly plant-based. I actually just cook bean-based pasta. I think that's a really great solution for those of you who are following a plant-based diet because I don't personally love any of the protein options for like go into pasta.
So I don't love adding beans into my pasta. I don't like adding tofu into my pasta, and that's where a bean-based pasta works really well 'cause one serving has up to 20 grams of protein.
So you basically have your pasta and your protein, and then you can just use whatever types of vegetables you want. So that's what we do at home. We make a big batch of pasta, whether it's with pesto, sometimes it's a cheese sauce, vegan cheese sauce, sometimes it's just with veggies, lemon, garlic.
You guys have seen me make a million pastas in my "What I Eat In A Day" videos, but again that is an opportunity for you to just make one big batch of something as your base, and then if people want to have their own protein on the side, whether it is chicken or shrimp or whatever, they can stir that in in the end, and again you're cutting down on your cooking time.
My fourth suggestion is salads, and salads kind of go with the first one, the bowl meal. It's basically like a giant vegetable meal, and then you can put whatever on top you want. So basically any type of salad.
This can really be like honestly anything. It could be a kale salad. It could be a green salad. It could be a romaine salad. It could be like a chopped veggie salad, like a Greek salad, and then just have your separate proteins on the side.
For me, beans are so easy. I just rinse them out of the can. I'll make them in the instant pot. I have those on hand almost all the time. So I'll just use that on top of mine, and then usually it's chicken for Matt, and again we just have to do like one separate thing, and then we can just put them on top of our salads and call it a day.
All right, so we have two more going down the list. My fifth one is stir fries, and kind of like stir fries / rice dishes in general. Rice I think is something similar to pasta. It's just like a really easy base.
You could also do quinoa if you're not a big rice fan, and basically we'll just do a rice-based dish with vegetables. I personally love stir fries. So I'll do like ginger and garlic and tamari, and then the protein is on the side, and it can just be added in at the end.
It can be stirred in, or it can just be topped. So stir fries, again, really easy. They also reheat really well, and the same goes true for other type of rice dishes. So it doesn't have to be like a stir-fry necessarily.
It could be just like a tomato and rice with tofu and beans or chicken. It could be rice and like a fried rice. It could be, I don't know. Basically anything goes with rice. It's so simple and plain, and I don't know why I'm just saying rice as the base, but also quinoa is a really great option too.
It's also very plain. It's great 'cause it has a plant-based protein in it. So you could use that as a form of protein for yourself if you do follow a plant-based diet. So number six on our list, the last thing on our list is soups and stews.
I think I consider soups more of a better way to have a protein-flexible meal than stews 'cause stews tend to take a longer time to cook, and they kind of build flavor based on their ingredients, but soups are a really great option for protein-flexible meals because you can stir things in.
So what I would like to do and what I recommend doing is that I would just make like a standard vegetarian-based soup whether that's a vegetable soup, maybe it's one of my creamy-based soups, maybe it is a chilly, and I'll just keep it kind of simple.
I won't put beans in it. I won't do anything like that if the person that you live with does not like beans. Mine doesn't like beans. So we would make a non-bean-based soup, and then when it's ready to go, you can stir in your protein at the end into each of the individual bowls.
So whether that's shredded chicken for one and beans for the other, maybe it's baked tofu for one and shrimp for the other, whatever it is, you can just kind of stir it in at the end, and you still have a really delicious soup.
Soup is great because it's only usually one pot. So it cooks fairly easily. It doesn't take a ton of cleanup, and it's also like you can make a big batch. So it's great for meal prep. It's great for freezer meals and things like that.
So that pretty much does it for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope it was helpful. I know I kind of talked kind of fast. So if you have any questions about what I was talking about or if there was any areas of confusion, let me know in the comments and I will be sure to clarify.
As I mentioned, everything that you need to know about today's video, the meal ideas and everything that we kind of talked about, the six different things, those will all be listed out in the description box as well.
So hopefully you have everything you need there, and otherwise I appreciate you being here. I am gonna start kind of creating more content around this idea of being protein flexible because I think that a lot of people live this way now, and it's kind of personally how I live.
So I think we will be creating more content around this idea. So if there are any ideas that you have or suggestions or anything else you want to learn, definitely let me know. And yeah. Otherwise, thank you so much for being here.
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(bright upbeat music) [Music] hi friends welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is ELISA and today I am so excited about this video because I am doing another one recipe six ways I guess you could say we've done two of these on the channel already a steel-cut oatmeal one as well as a chia pudding one and today we are doing savory quinoa bowls so I am going to show you how to make a quinoa bowl six different ways using just simple cooked quinoa so you can basically just click a big batch and have it for all six of these recipes I'm also really excited to be partnering up again in 2020 with my lovely friends at Bob's Red Mill I have been working with Bob's Red Mill since almost the very beginning of my blog so at least six years I think and they're one of my favorite partners because I absolutely love not only the brand and the company and the people that work there but also the products so today we're using their white quinoa in these different bowls but they do have other varieties that you could swap in and out if you wanted as well as other grains so they're a great place to buy grains and beans and seeds and flowers so check their website out for all of the different products and I'm sure that you could probably also find them in your local grocery store so let's talk about these recipes I'm not going to share it right now the specific flavors but essentially my goal with this video was to show you how you can meal prep t-mobile's for an entire week even though we have six recipes basically you just have to cook quinoa like I said and you can use one serving of quinoa with all of these different flavors and I also tried to combine some of the vegetables so that you could kind of chop different vegetables and use them in a few different recipes so that it would kind of cut down on the ingredient list that you need and still kind of give you different flavors with each so I hope you guys enjoy and before we dive in don't forget to subscribe by clicking the red button those right below this video and as always all of the posts information recipes everything like that will be linked down in the description box for you so without further ado let's go ahead and dive in alright so we're gonna first start by cooking some quinoa and you guys probably already know how to do this but you're basically just gonna add your quinoa again I'm using Bob's Red Mill white quinoa here into your saucepan and then you will add in your water and the quinoa to water ratio is 1 to 2 so 1 part quinoa to 2 parts water bring that extra to a boil then you'll just pop on the lid and you'll let this simmer and cook for about 15 minutes until the water has been absorbed and the quinoa is nice and fluffy so if you're gonna make all of these recipes I recommend making about 2 cups of uncooked quinoa which will yield about 6 cups of regular quinoa and that should be enough for each of these recipes and then you'll also want to let this cool and kind of fluff before you use it in your bowls alright so bowl number 1 is our Mexican keema Bowl we're gonna start by adding our quinoa in as well as some canned black beans some corn some salsa I just use a jarred salsa as well as some sliced avocado on top and some fresh cilantro and then what I like to do is chop that avocado right up and then I stir it all together and it's my beautiful little Mexican fiesta bowl it is so good so simple you don't even need a sauce and this will definitely keep for a couple days in the fridge [Music] recipe number two is our super food bowl we're gonna start with our cooked quinoa we're also gonna add in some massaged kale I just massaged this with some lemon juice we're gonna add in some sliced radish for a little bit of crunch some roasted sweet potatoes which you can meal prep ahead as well as some chopped up avocado sprinkle that with some chopped up almonds and I like to drizzle it with my spicy lemon dressing which I will link below for you and then you can finish it off with some hemp seeds if you want a little bit of protein and you can just stir this all together and just like the last one dig in and enjoy and again this one should last for a couple days in the fridge as well [Music] our third recipe is our Mediterranean quinoa bowl we're gonna start by adding our quinoa into our Bowl to that you're gonna add in some canned chickpeas as well as some chopped up cherry tomatoes some chopped up cucumber chopped up olives and some chopped up parsley you could also add in a little bit of red onion if you wanted but careful of onion breath and then you're gonna drizzle this with a tahini sauce I am NOT giving you sauce directions in this video so I will link some sauce ideas down below for you but this is just one of my classic tahini dressings and I love to finish this off with just a sprinkle of hemp seeds because it looks pretty and B it adds a little bit of protein and then you can stir it all together and dig in and enjoy this one is just kind of like a classic Greek quinoa salad bright flavorful kind of tangy and really really delicious [Music] well number three is our Moroccan Kuna bowl this one we start with our cooked quinoa in the bottom you're also gonna add in some chickpeas that I just tossed with some smoked paprika we're also gonna add in some sliced up carrots some chopped up pistachios as well as a few dates that have been chopped up and then we're also gonna add in some herbs I like to do a blend of cilantro and parsley but you can really do just lanzhou or parsley if you wanted and again finish it off with that tahini sauce it's the same sauce that I used in the last one but again I can link some down below for you and you can just finish that with a sprinkle of the stash iou's and you're good to go again I just recommend stirring this all together so that everything is all nice and combined and the sauce gets all combined on everything and it just gets all nice and mixed up and flavorful Bowl number five is our pesto Aquino bowl again we're gonna start with our quinoa on the bottom and then we're gonna add in some chopped spinach you could also use kale if you want it I just like spinach here we're gonna use some peas that I just thawed there just frozen peas and some pesto and you can use any pestered her made I have a vegan pesto that is so awesome so if you want to make homemade I will link that down below for you it is seriously so good and then I finish it off with some hemp seeds just for some extra protein this one also would be great with white beans or chickpeas if you wanted to bulk it up even more and I have to say I think this one might be my favorite I am just such a pesto lover I am like obsessed with pesto and I just think it tastes so good so I love to stir it all together and I like the sweetness of the peas the Urbanus of the pesto the saltiness of the pesto and then I love of course getting in some extra greens there so this one is probably my favorite if I had to pick one and then our last one is our Asian quinoa Bowl we are gonna start with again our cooked quinoa in the base and that we're gonna add in some sliced carrots just like we did with the Moroccan one we're also gonna use some sliced up cabbage as well as some tofu you could use any type of tofu you wanted I actually used my coconut tofu tenders that I shared last week chop them up and used that but use any type of tofu you want or tempeh would work and then we're also gonna add in some cilantro for some Irby flavor and finish it off with my spicy almond butter dressing which of course I will link below for you and I also love to finish this off after I've drizzled it with the almond butter dressing with some chopped up almonds because it adds a really nice crunch and you get a few extra healthy fats and a little bit of protein so I love adding nuts and seeds on top of my bowls and just like the last ones we are going to just mix this all together to get the dressing nice and combined to make sure that all the ingredients are folded in there kind of turns into a salad and I just think it tastes really good when it's all mixed in but I guess mixing is optional it's up to you either way these all six are absolutely delicious I hope that you see how easy it is to use quinoa and I can't wait to hear which one you are going to try first and there you have it my friends I hope you enjoyed our quinoa bowls video six different ways I personally love putting these videos together it really makes me think about how I can meal prep things for you and how I can kind of simplify the process of creating different recipes but still kind of keeping them as basic as possible and keeping them as easy as possible so really my goal with these videos that I do with the six different combinations is that you have one simple base in this case it's just plain cooked quinoa and then you can swap your flavors in and out to kind of give you a whole different type of meal so I hope you guys enjoy them if there's anything that you would like to see this type of recipe for or this type of video for let me know in the comments I think that will do maybe a sweet keema bowls recipe that could be really fun maybe an overnight oats I'm not sure you any suggestions let me know in the comments and I also of course want to thank Bob's Arnold for joining us in today's video like I said in the beginning they are an amazing partner and so excited to be partnering up with them again in 2020 I have linked their website down below it has all of their product information as well as a store locator and their quinoa is awesome so if you're looking for a good kingdom and I highly highly recommend it I also want to encourage you to head on over to the blog to check out the different flavor ingredient options as well as like the specific measurement so that is all in a whole big blog post everything is in one spot for you guys with the measurements and everything like that so I hope you guys found that helpful thank you so much for watching again don't forget to give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it you have requests for another type of video like this let me know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe before you go there's a red button right below this video all you have to do is click that button and then if you click that little bell let us right next to it that will turn on your notifications to make sure you never miss another video thanks so much for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one bye [Music] you you
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