Eating Bird Food: Kale, Chickpea and Sweet Potato Bowls

Brittany’s here from Eating Bird Food and she’s sharing one of her favorite recipes – vegan rice bowls with creamy peanut sauce. When I’m hard pressed for time and have a bunch of random vegetables and proteins in the fridge, rice bowls never cease to save the day! Pair them with a great sauce, and you have yourself a meal that will make any member of the family happy.

If you’re allergic to peanuts, try using roasted sunflower butter in place of the peanut butter. I do this for basically every peanut based recipe and love it just the same.

Hi HPers! I’m Brittany, the author of the blog Eating Bird Food. Although I’m a little jealous of Leanne’s trip to India, I’m honored to be guest posting for her. I admire Leanne’s ability to create amazingly delicious recipes on the regular that are dairy-fee, gluten-free, sugar reduced, corn-free and yeast-free!

With those dietary guidelines in mind I decided to share one my favorite recipes with you all. There are a few steps to the recipe, but don’t let that discourage you from trying it. I promise it’s worth the time spent in the kitchen!

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Kale, Chickpea and Sweet Potato Bowls

Vegan, Gluten free, Dairy free, Refined sugar free, Yeast free, Corn free

Rice bowls with blanched kale, baked sweet potatoes and chickpeas in a creamy peanut sauce.

Yield: ~6 cups

Servings: 3 to 4 (depending on how hungry everyone is)

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked long grain brown rice
• 1 bunch of fresh kale, cleaned and de-stemmed
• 1 cup cooked chickpeas, or 1 15 oz. can
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into bite size chunks
• sea salt, to taste
• creamy peanut sauce, recipe below

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicon baking mat.
2. Chop sweet potatoes into 1/4 inch chunks, sprinkle with sea salt and bake for 30 minutes.
3. While sweet potatoes are baking, cook brown rice according to the instructions on the package.
4. Blanch kale in boiling water for 3 minutes, remove kale from water with a slotted spoon and place kale in an ice water bath so it stops cooking. Drain and squeeze the water out, chop and set the kale aside.
5. Prepare creamy peanut butter sauce (recipe below)
6. When the rice and sweet potatoes are done you can start compiling your bowls. Each bowl should contain 1/2 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup blanched kale, 1/4 cup chickpeas, 1/2 cup roasted sweet potato chunks.
7. Drizzle each bowl with some of the creamy peanut sauce and enjoy!

View nutrition info

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Creamy Peanut Sauce

Vegan, Gluten free, Dairy free, Refined sugar free, Yeast free, Corn free

Yield: ~3/4 cup

Servings: 7

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup natural peanut butter
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1/2 tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped
• 1/8 cup rice vinegar
• 1/8 cup wheat-free tamari, shoyu or soy sauce
• 1/8 cup brown rice syrup
• a pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)
• water, to thin

Directions

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend. Then add as much water as necessary to make the consistency that you like. It makes quite a bit so store any leftovers in the fridge for later. (It tastes good on everything!)

View nutrition info

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I hope you all enjoy this recipe! Feel free to stop by Eating Bird Food to check out some of my other recipes as well.

Tagged as: peanut, rice, rice bowl, stir fry, sweet potato