A Buddha Bowl is a great way to incorporate healthy meals into your diet. It's a combination of grains or pulses, fresh and cooked veggies, protein and a rich sauce. You can create an unlimited amount of combinations using seasonal ingredients.
Our Buddha bowl is vegan and we served it with tofu as the main protein source. Buddha bowls are naturally vegetarian and most of the recipes you can find are gluten-free (so it's ours).
This meal has been popular during these last years but Buddha bowls came to stay. They are healthy, pretty looking, really versatile and simple to prepare making them a perfect weekday meal or a light weekend dinner.
We have been preparing Buddha bowls at home for many years now, but never created a recipe until today. We like making the bowls with the ingredients we have at home, creating really different combinations every time. This recipe needed sharing though. We have found the right balance of flavours and textures served with one of our most delicious sauces, a homemade peanut sauce.
How to build the perfect Buddha Bowl
To build your bowl you need to keep in mind some ingredient groups:
- Grains. Start your bowl choosing a grain that you love. We start making our Buddha bowl with whole-grain rice. You can choose to use other grains or pulses such as quinoa or lentils.
- Protein. Use a plant-based protein to keep this recipe vegan. Tofu is our favourite protein and for this recipe we marinate the tofu cut into cubes in soy sauce, maple and sriracha before baking it. The result is absolutely delicious!
- Veggies. We like mixing cooked vegetables with raw ones during winter, to give the bowl a warm touch keeping it fresh and light. For our Buddha bowl we roasted sweet potato and broccoli and added fresh cucumber and radish.
- Healthy fats. Is a Buddha bowl complete without an avocado? Not at home! We finish every bowl adding a beautiful avocado.
- Sauce. This meal needs to be served with a sauce and in our opinion it's better if the sauce is rich and packed with umami. We made our homemade peanut sauce for this vegan bowl. It's easy to prepare but so delicious that you will definetely want to serve the bowl with extra sauce on the side to keep adding it!
Note: if you enjoy spicy food as much as we do, make sure to add some heat to your dish. We love adding some sesame chili oil before serving.
How to prepare the Baked Tofu
Tofu can be quite bland if it’s not seasoned or marinated. For this recipe, we made a marinade out of soy sauce, sriracha and maple syrup. The ingredients we use are quite simple and we pretty much always have them in the kitchen.
Choose extra firm tofu for this recipe. If your tofu is not extra firm you may need to press the excess of water out by placing it in between two plates and adding a heavy element on the top.
To prepare the tofu, we cut it into cubes. You can choose to cut it into bigger triangles or smaller cubes. Add the tofu into a medium-size mixing bowl and add some cornstarch. Combine well making sure all the tofu cubes are coated and then add the marinade.
Leave marinating for at least 10-15 minutes while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Then place the cubes on a baking tray (we like using a baking mat for this step) and bake for about 25 minutes until golden and crispy. We bake the sweet potato with the tofu as they have similar cooking times.
If you want to give your tofu and extra cheesy flavour keeping it vegan, have a look at our Crispy Tofu Recipe.
How to make the Peanut Sauce
Our favourite part of this Vegan Buddha Bowl with Tofu is the peanut sauce that we serve on the top of the rest of the ingredients. It's exactly the same sauce we use for our Tofu Satay.
When we lived in Berlin, we used to go to a Tibetan restaurant where they would serve the best peanut sauce with spring rolls. We could never get enough of that sauce, it was extremely delicious. We mastered that peanut sauce at home with the following ingredients:
Peanut Butter. For the peanut sauce, you will need to use smooth or creamy peanut butter.
Brown sugar. To give a bit of sweetness to the sauce you can use as well maple syrup or honey.
Soy sauce. Dark or light soy sauce will both work for your peanut sauce. If you are using light soy sauce, as it’s saltier, adjust the amount.
Lime juice. The freshly squeezed lime juice will give your peanut dip that lovely tanginess.
Rice vinegar. Optional. We love adding a little bit of rice vinegar as it’s rich in umami.
Warm water. Adding warm water to your dip will bring the sauce together. You can adjust this ingredient depending on your taste or the use you want to give to the peanut sauce to make it thicker or more liquid.
Simply combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk until you have a homogeneous sauce.
Vegan Buddha Bowl with Tofu, the perfect dish for meal prepping.
January is an exciting month to start meal prepping. We all try to eat healthier during the first months of the year and especially after Christmas. Meal prep is definitely a good way to start eating healthier and more conscious. Preparing your lunch and dinner in advanced, when you are not hungry and eager to start eating, will lead you to cook less quantity and with healthier ingredients.
Prepare you Buddha Bowl in advance and keep the peanut sauce in a separate air-tight container. All the ingredients can be prepared beforehand except the avocado, which will be better to cut right before having the meal to avoid oxidation.
Vegan Buddha Bowl with Tofu
Ingredients
- 200 g tofu
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon sriracha
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- ½ sweet potato
- ¼ broccoli
- 1 cup rice
- 4-5 radish
- ½ cucumber
- 1 avocado
- 1 teaspoon black sesame seeds
Peanut Sauce
- ⅓ cup peanut butter room temperature
- 1 teaspoon brown sugar
- ½ tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons lime juice
- 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
- ⅓ cup warm water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 Cº / 350 Fº.
- Cut the tofu block into cubes. Transfer the tofu to a medium-size mixing bowl. Add the cornstarch and mix well making sure all the tofu cubes are well coated. Add the soy sauce, sriracha and maple syrup. Combine all the ingredients and leave to marinate for 10-15 minutes.
- Cook the rice following the packet instructions.
- While the tofu is marinating, cut the sweet potato into cubes. Place the cubes on a baking tray and when the tofu is ready add the tofu on the same pan. Bake for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, add the broccoli cut into florets and bake all the ingredients for 15 more minutes. Take the tray out of the oven and set aside.
- Cut the cucumber and radish into thin slices. Cut the avocado in half and then into cubes.
- Once all the ingredients are prepared, choose a bowl and add the rice, sweet potato, broccoli, cucumber, radish and avocado.
- Peanut Sauce
- To prepare the peanut sauce, add into a medium-size bowl peanut butter, brown sugar, soy sauce, lime juice, rice vinegar, ginger powder and the warm water. Mix well all the ingredients until everything is completely combined and the sauce looks homogeneous. If your sauce is too thick, add some extra water and if it looks too liquidy, add some more peanut sauce.
- Add the sauce on top of your ingredients and sprinkle some black sesame seeds. If you enjoy eating spicy food, we strongly recommend adding some sesame chili oil before serving.
Notes
| If you tried our recipe, please leave a comment or tag us on Instagram. We are always happy to see your creations! |
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