Winter Vegetable Meal Prep Bowls with quick-pickled red cabbage, roasted sweet potato, broccoli, smoked tofu, and magic tahini sauce to make all your dreams come true!
Do you ever have ridiculously specific cravings? I mean, down to the detail, each component accounted for ridiculously specific cravings?
After two weeks of vacation eating, I came home and was like, "I want brown rice bowls with pickled red cabbage, smoked tofu, roasted sweet potatoes, broccoli, and really good tahini sauce."
A matter of hours later I was quick-pickling some red cabbage, roasting sweet potatoes, steaming broccoli, and bringing these Winter Vegetable Meal Prep Bowls to life.
This is one of those meals that has a lot of different components to prepare, which can seem daunting. However, you can make each and every part in advance, no problemo.
The quick-pickled cabbage needs a bit of time, a few hours at minimum, so while it's doing it's thing you can cook the brown rice, make the sauce, roast the sweet potato, and get your broccoli organized.
Each of these things can be done even a day in advance (Related: Batch Cooking for Beginners) and will last the better part of a week in your fridge. You can basically set up a DIY meal prep bowl bar in your fridge, and when it comes time to assemble the bowls people can pick and choose what they want.
It's like having a Whole Foods salad bar in your fridge, but at the fraction of the cost.
How do you make meal prep bowls?
In general my meal bowl game plan goes like this: pick a base (in this case it's brown rice), some veggies, a protein (we're using smoked tofu to make things easy), and a sauce.
(Related: How to Make a Meal Bowl Without a Recipe)
In this case we're making the rockstar all-purpose hippy dip sauce of my dreams. It's all nutritional yeast and tahini and soy sauce and other delicious things, and it's good on pretty much anything.
ANYTHING? Well, I'd draw the line at pancakes, but any savoury dish that'd benefit from a splash of sauce will be the perfect companion of this here sauce situation.
Pro tips / recipe notes:
Pre-cooked rice makes these meal prep bowls a total breeze. Did you know you can freeze brown rice? Makes things super simple come dinner time!
I was feeling lazy and didn't want to pan-fry and season my tofu on top of making everything else, so I opted for smoked tofu, which is already seasoned to perfection. If you can't find smoked tofu, you can use regular and either keep it plain Jane (because the sauce is going to kick things up a notch anyways), or just a quick pan-fry in some EVOO should do the trick.
You can mix and match your veggies as you please. Maybe a big batch of Mediterranean Roast Vegetables instead of sweet potato? Or try Roasted Romanesco in place of the steamed broccoli?
The sauce makes a big batch but it is DELICIOUS so you're going to want it all. It will last about a week in your fridge.
Any more questions? Hit me up in the comments and I'll answer them as best I can.
Other tasty meal prep bowls you might enjoy:
Vegan Sheet Pan Fajita Bowls with Spicy Chickpeas and Cauliflower
Vegan Poké Bowls
Tempeh Reuben Bowls
Barbecue Tofu Bowls
Wild Rice Bowls with Sweet Potato and Spicy Tofu
Spring Living Lentil Bowls
Greens n' Grains Breakfast Bowls
Winter Vegetable Meal Prep Bowls
Ingredients
- 4 cups cooked brown rice
- 1 medium sweet potato roasted
- 1 bunch broccoli steamed
- 8 ounces smoked tofu cubed
- 1 batch quick pickled red cabbage
Magic Tahini Sauce
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes
- 3 tablespoon water
- 3 Tbsp tamari or soy sauce
- 3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 small garlic clove crushed
- ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 3 tablespoon tahini paste
Instructions
To make the sauce
- Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and run until completely smooth.
To make the bowls
- Cook the brown rice according to package directions to yield 4 cups of cooked rice.
- Slice the sweet potatoes into rounds. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place into the oven and roast at 200°C / 400°F for 20 minutes, or until sweet potato is tender and golden.
- Chop the broccoli into florets and lightly steam.
- Cube the smoked tofu.
- To assemble the bowls, place 1 cup brown rice into each bowl. Arrange roasted sweet potato, smoked tofu, steamed broccoli, and pickled red cabbage over top. Serve with magic tahini sauce.
Notes
- Nutrition values are an estimate only.
- Magic tahini sauce will last up to one week in your fridge.
Nutrition
This recipe was first published January 30, 2018. It was edited, updated, and re-published January 23, 2020.
Cai says
Is there any decent replacement for the nutritional yeast? This meal sounds great but I don't really like the taste of it and don't usually keep any on hand.
Katie Trant says
Hmm, I can't really think of anything with a similar flavour profile. Maybe miso? But as I haven't tested it I hesitate to recommend making the switch. If you don't like nutritional yeast I recommend making a tahini based dressing that you do like and using that instead. Or, buy some nutritional yeast for this dressing and keep it in the freezer - it'll last years that way!
Sandra Lea says
Looking forward to trying this sauce. I've always believed you can make a meal out of anything if you have a good sauce to top it with.
sophie says
Does this microwave well? If i bring it to uni i mean- it’s so cold!
Katie Trant says
It sure does!
Rachel Baaske says
Love everything about this!
Katie Trant says
Thanks Rachel, I do as well! And I'm enjoying mixing it up with spring flavours now that the seasons are finally starting to change.
Christy says
I love vegetables for my diet & your veg meal bowl & its ingredients are under my diet plan so I'm gonna use it but only one thing which you add in this recipe is out of my plan is RICE so I'll neglect them for this otherwise for all other persons its an awesome who are vegetarians. Thanks for your great knowledge to sharing with us.
Tessa says
I love the bowl. The cabbage is a must try. And I love the nutritional yeast part of the tahini sauce. But I really want to reduce the oil. Any thoughts?
I’ve been making more bowls, with sauces, and find the taste of the nut paste a bit heavy. Maybe that much oil works to spread that out a bit. (?)
Katie Trant says
I know it seems like a lot of oil, but it makes a LOT of dressing. Rather than reducing the oil (I've tried before, and the recipe as written actually IS a reduction of oil from the original recipe) I'd recommend making a half batch of the dressing and using it sparingly.
Katie Trant says
An updated reply: I made another batch of this dressing and fiddled around with reducing the oil and increasing the water. It wasn't good. I ended up needing to add way more tahini to fix things. So my previous answer stands: make less, use less, don't mess with the ratios.