A super nutrient-packed veggie rice bowl to make you feel like a rockstar.

Now that it’s summer, I’m loving cooking again and using all the lovely seasonal ingredients. After awhile, some of those veggies start to pile up in the fridge, and this recipe is a great way to use a ton of them at once!

Disclaimer: You’re going to see a lot of recipes from Whole Bowls on here, my favorite cookbook written by Allison Day. So do yourself a favor, and just go buy it. You’ll thank me, and eventually name your first child after me. You’re welcome.

I still can’t get over the dressing for this dish. It’s phenomenal. I made a double batch and used it all week. So here’s the skinny. In the cookbook, it only makes one serving, so I’ve upped the quantities to feed about 4. Enjoy.

Bowl Ingredients

• 4 small/medium beets, whole
• 2 cups of water
• 1 cup brown rice (I love basmati, but you do you)
• 2 cups of cooked chickpeas (canned is fine, just rinse them so you don’t die of a sodium overdose)
• 2 cups finely shredded red cabbage
• 16 radishes, quartered
• 1/2 a head of radicchio, cored and cut into wedges
• 1/2 cup roasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
• 8 sprigs of fresh cilantro

Dressing Ingredients

• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons hazelnut oil or olive oil
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• ground black pepper to taste

To Make the Bowls

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Cover the beets in foil and roast for 1-2 hours, or until tender when pierced with a knife. Once the beets have cooled, remove the foil, peel off the skin (should fall off when you rub it with your fingers), cut off the top and bottom of the beet, and slice into wedges.

You can make the rice in a pot of boiling water, but if you don’t own a rice cooker, what are you doing with your life??? Go get one!

To Make the Dressing

Combine all of the ingredients in a mason jar, put the lid on, and shake it like a polaroid picture. It’s not rocket science.

To (Avengers) Assemble

Take your bowls and layer in sections the cooked rice, the chickpeas, cabbage, radishes, and radicchio. Pour over the dressing to taste. Top with crushed hazelnuts and cilantro sprigs (the toasted hazelnuts MAKE this meal). Optional, pour some balsamic glaze or balsamic vinegar over top.

Things I Might Do Differently Next Time

So this dish was great, and everything Alison Day tells me to make, I will do so with joy and gladness. However, there are some things I’d do differently next time.

1. Make a lifetime supply of the dressing
2. Either don’t add the radicchio, or sauté it slightly. It is just SO bitter to have alongside other raw veggies, like cabbage and radishes, which have strong flavors all on their own.
3. Day actually suggests lightly sautéing or steaming the veggies to make it a warm bowl, rather than predominantly cold, and I think that would be fun to try and see how it shakes things up.

Have you made this? What would you do differently? Let me know in the comments below!