Spinach or kale, an avocado, green onions, a nub of fresh ginger. Put these in your basket the next time you’re at the grocery, and a healthy dinner is only as far away as cooking rice. Thanks to Melissa Clark of the New York Times for the 5-star springboard recipe: Quinoa Rice Bowl with Kale, Kimchi and Egg. What I love about this recipe is that everyone can create their own bowl from an assortment of prepared ingredients. If you’re making several bowls, you might want to swap the hard-boiled eggs for a big pan of scrambled, much easier to keep everything hot and served at the same time.
Mix up the dipping sauce/dressing in a small jar, it’ll be enough to drizzle over at least 6 bowls. Double the recipe and stash it in your refrigerator to simplify things next time (which will be at least once per week, if you’re like us). This dressing is also great for chicken salad or something like this White-Cooked Chicken dinner.
Ginger-Soy Dipping Sauce/Dressing
adapted from Melissa Clark, The New York Times
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons neutral flavored vegetable oil like peanut, avocado, or canola
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari
- 2 inches fresh ginger, peeled then grated with a microplane grater or finely chopped
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, unseasoned
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- optional: ½ teaspoon sugar or honey
Instructions
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Whisk together all ingredients in a glass jar. Use as a dipping sauce or drizzle over a rice bowl. Refrigerate extra dressing.
Stuff for your bowls. Let everyone assemble their own. Choose from this list or try the NYTimes recipe above:
- rice, quinoa, or other grain; cooked
- briefly steamed kale or spinach; sometimes I cook some Annie Chun potstickers for the same meal and steam the greens in the same pan with the potstickers
- sliced green onions
- avocado slices
- eggs; soft or hard boiled, fried, or scrambled (all good!)
- kimchi
- leftover cooked pork, shrimp or smoked salmon
- roasted seaweed, cut into strips
- toasted sesame seeds
- drizzle with a tablespoon of Soy Ginger Dressing