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Last updated on June 29th, 2022 at 03:03 pm
Try these roasted vegetable healthy lunch bowls, they’re absolutely delicious! This is a wonderful healthy lunch idea that will fill you up (I actually wrote feel you up – I guess these have more talents than we knew) and make you feel satiated. These healthy vegan bowls are full of flavor and gluten-free!
About These Healthy Lunch Bowls
So, these vegan chickpea bowls are amazing! Like, okay, I realize how non-humble this sounds, given that my incredibly talented and perfectly moisturized feminine hands made them. But they are. Can’t tell you something is bronze when it’s actually gold. I’m not a liar.
They’re super easy to make, but they do take a bit more time than I’d like to admit. Like around 30 minutes. And you’ll need to multitask until your IQ drops to 30. You’ll chop the vegetables, then sear them in a pan (or roast or grill them), chop salads, blend sauces, toast chickpeas, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll stare into nothing and then….Just when you think it’s finally time to eat and enjoy the chickpeas of your labor, ladies and gentlemen – clean up. The cherry on top. The forbidden topic. Cleanup is the part, most books, blogs and people don’t tell you about when they talk about food. Yay, make this, it’s delicious and healthy and will make you smell and fly like a pterodactyl. Disclaimer: You’ll need to clean up for the rest of your night. Congrats. Muhahahaha.
So what I was going for with these bowls is flavor. I wanted every single bite to have a different flavor. One tastes like lemon, the other one like garlic, the next one like dark chocolate. Majestic combo!
The chickpeas are spicy, the vegetables are slightly sweet from the “roasting”, the salad is super fresh with the addition of dill and cucumbers, the olives are salty and the sauce…well it’s all about that garlic here. I also added a radish, because I had some radishes and they’re really good for you and your liver, and they’re crunchy.
What You’ll Need For These Bowls
Quite a few things. This is not a recipe with under 10 ingredients, mkay? This is a recipe where you get out everything you have in your fridge and pantry as if Marie Kondo told you to. Ask the can of chickpeas whether it sparks joy in your life, and then realize it doesn’t really matter because you’re gonna open it anyway and go absolutely insane here.
Here’s what we need:
- Vegetables For Roasting/ Searing / Grilling. Here you can use whatever vegetables you have and want to cook. I used zucchini, bell pepper and carrots. These are great with some olive oil and garlic and you don’t really need to add much more to them. You can also do cauliflower, eggplant, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, whatever you have. You can add more spices if you want to.
- Fresh vegetables for the salad. Here I went for my classic tomato-cucumber salad and added some fresh dill, because I like it. And because you can’t always have basil. It was a nice addition.
- Chickpeas and spices. A can of chickpeas does spark joy in my world and I coated these with some spices.
- Cashews. Yes, I made a garlicky cashew sauce by blending some softened cashews with garlic, salt and lemon. Delicious!
- Olives. Any type of olives you like. I had some Kalamata olives, even though green is my favorite type of olives.
How To Make These Bowls
As I mentioned, if you want to make these quickly, you’ll need to forget everything you’ve been taught about productivity and multitask like there’s no tomorrow.
- Preparing Chickpeas. Rinse and drain those chickpeas until they’re sparkling clean. Then put them into a bowl, add some olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, paprika and crushed pepper flakes and mix until they’re coated all the way. Heat them up in a pan for 3-4 minutes stirring.
- Preparing the Roasted Vegetables. Okay, so I didn’t really roast them, because I wanted to use the same pan I used for the chickpeas (as you can tell I’ve got my issues with cleanup). Also because I feel like it’s quicker. But you can definitely roast or grill these vegetables. The important part here is to season and to add oil. Otherwise, they’re gonna get dry and pretty much inedible. (My mom put me through this last year…Thanks mom! Zucchini on the grill without oil, never again.). If you’re grilling, make sure to slice length-wise, for roasting the shape doesn’t really matter, for the pan I cut them all in circles. I chopped up a garlic clove added some salt and olive oil and that was it. I also covered the vegetables in the beginning for 1-2 minutes to speed up the cooking process. Then uncover and stir.
- Cashew Sauce. You’ll need some soaked cashews, garlic, lemon juice, water and salt to make the sauce in your blender. If you’ve forgotten to soak cashews, do not worry – you can soak them real quick in some hot water and that would work as well. Blend until super smooth and your sauce is ready.
- Salad. Chop some cucumbers, tomatoes and a little bit of onion and dill, add a little bit of salt, a little bit of oil and mix. This salad is fresh and delicious and perfect for any meal.
- Assemble your bowls. Some chickpeas here, some chickpeas there, some salad, some roasted vegetables, olives, radishes and top everything with the cashews sauce.
Meal Prep Option
Now this recipe doesn’t make a ton in my hungry opinion. Sure you can feed two people, but can you feed a third one that is not a liar? Probably not. So if you want to meal prep this or share it with more than one person, then I suggest you double the recipe.
For meal prep you can make ahead the chickpeas, roasted vegetables and cashew sauce, keep them in separate containers or in containers with compartments. Add the olives, some fresh vegetables without dressing and you’ll be good for about 3 days.
This is a wonderful meal to share with the family and put on the dinner table as well. Just make sure that everyone is okay with eating spicy food, if not, leave out the crushed red pepper flakes when preparing the chickpeas.
There are many mysteries in this world and I guess it’s okay, that we’ll never know why it took me an hour to write this post. Here’s the printable recipe.