Kale Rice Bowl

My lunch, at least a few days a week, is some sort of rice bowl or grain bowl. I love a feel-good lunch, and using rice as the foundation, I can usually grab other components from the refrigerator to make something quick and satisfying. This Kale Rice Bowl, for example, is worth a shout out. You have grains plus greens, dollops of creamy salted yogurt, blistered capers, and plenty of homemade za’atar. So good!

Kale Rice Bowl: Make Ahead Plan

Most of the components here can be made ahead. They’re also good travelers – work lunches, picnics, etc. So you could meal prep on a Sunday for meals through out the week. For that approach here’s the plan.

• Cook the rice.  Then allow it to cool and then refrigerate until you’re ready to eat. At that point you can either heat it, or allow it enough time to come up to room temperature.
• Cook some eggs.  If you like an egg on top of your rice bowls, make a few hard-boiled eggs or fried eggs and refrigerate those as well.
• Choose your spices: I use za’atar as my seasoning here, but if you have another favorite spice blend, no problem. Have that at the ready.

I typically fry up the capers and salt the yogurt at the last minute, but you could also do that in the morning if you’re packing a lunch for later.

Variations

You can certainly take a rice bowl like this one in many different directions. I mentioned exploring a spice or seasoning swap up above. On the grain front, you see brown rice here, but farro would be nice, or a quinoa / rice blend. When it comes to the kale, my original intent was to bake the shredded kale (massaged with olive oil and za’atar), so it had more of a crispy texture (kale chips), but didn’t want to wait for the oven to heat. I ended up sautéing the kale instead. This is a long way of saying, play around!

More Rice Bowl Recipes

• A Simple Brown Rice Sushi Bowl
• Sesame Coconut Rice
• Instant Pot Brown Rice Bowl
• Super Orange Citrus Rice
• Rainbow Cauliflower Rice Bowl
• Bryant Terry’s Amazing Green Rice

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