Roasted Vegetable Buddha Bowl
Grain, roast vegetables, something green, something crunchy and a sauce that ties it together. A template more than a recipe.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 620
- Calories
- 20g
- Protein
- 28g
- Fat
- 74g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 200 g pearl barley or farro
- 1 sweet potato
- 1 head broccoli
- 1 red onion
- 2 tins chickpeas (800 g)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 150 g kale or baby spinach
- 1 avocado
- 4 tbsp tahini
- 2 lemons
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 tsp maple syrup
- 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
- Salt and black pepper
Instructions
- 1Heat the oven to 220C fan and put two large baking trays in to heat up. Vegetables laid on a preheated tray start browning immediately instead of sweating.
- 2Rinse the barley and simmer it in plenty of salted water for 25 to 30 minutes, until tender with a chew. Drain well.
- 3Peel and cube the sweet potato. Break the broccoli into florets and cut the stem into batons — the stem is the best part and most people throw it away. Cut the onion into wedges.
- 4Drain the chickpeas and dry them thoroughly on a tea towel. Wet chickpeas steam; dry ones crisp.
- 5Toss the sweet potato and onion with 1 tbsp oil, the smoked paprika and salt. Toss the broccoli and chickpeas with 1 tbsp oil, the cumin and salt.
- 6Spread each mixture on its own hot tray in a single layer with space between the pieces. Crowding is the single most common reason roast vegetables come out pale and soft.
- 7Roast the sweet potato tray for 25 minutes and the broccoli and chickpea tray for 20, turning once, until the edges are properly caramelised.
- 8Make the dressing: grate the garlic and whisk it with the tahini, the juice of 1.5 lemons, the maple syrup and a pinch of salt. It will seize — add cold water a tablespoon at a time until it pours like single cream.
- 9Put the kale in a bowl with the remaining 1 tbsp oil, a pinch of salt and the last of the lemon juice, and scrunch it with your hands for a minute until it darkens and softens.
- 10Toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry pan for 2 minutes.
- 11Build each bowl in sections rather than mixing: barley, then the roast vegetables, then the kale, then sliced avocado. Keeping the components separate is what stops it becoming an undifferentiated pile.
- 12Spoon over the dressing and scatter with pumpkin seeds.
A bowl like this is a template, not a fixed recipe, and knowing the template means you can build one from whatever is in the fridge without looking anything up.
The five slots
Every good bowl has the same structure:
- A grain for bulk — barley, farro, brown rice, quinoa, freekeh
- A roasted vegetable for sweetness and caramelisation
- A protein — chickpeas here, but also lentils, tofu, eggs, leftover chicken
- Something raw and green for freshness
- A sauce with acid and fat, and something crunchy on top
Miss the sauce or the crunch and it reads as a plate of health food. Include them and it reads as a meal.
Preheat the trays
A cold baking tray has to warm up before it can transfer heat, and during that time the vegetables release water and sit in it. By the time the tray is hot they are already partly steamed.
Putting the trays in while the oven heats means the vegetables hit hot metal and begin browning within seconds. It costs nothing and the difference is obvious.
Two trays, not one
Sweet potato and broccoli want different times, and both want space. Crowding a single tray traps steam between the pieces, and steam prevents browning at any temperature.
If everything only just fits, use another tray. Space is the ingredient.
Dry the chickpeas
Tinned chickpeas carry a lot of surface water, and all of it has to boil off before anything above 100C can happen to them. A minute with a tea towel is the difference between crisp and soft.
Build in sections
Piling everything into a bowl and stirring gives you one flavour. Arranging the components in separate sections means each forkful can be a different combination, and the sauce hits some things and not others.
It is the same reasoning behind bibimbap, and it is why these bowls are always photographed that way — not for looks, but because it genuinely eats better.
Nutrition
Around 620 calories with 20 grams of protein and a very high fibre content — barley and chickpeas together do most of that. Sweet potato and kale make it a strong source of vitamin A and K, and the lemon in the dressing helps absorb the plant iron.
Every component keeps separately for four days, which makes this an efficient thing to cook once and assemble four times.
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