The hardest part about cooking in a busy household is keeping it simple and maintaining a level of healthfulness to your meals. Especially with the tendency to snack as you get busier, it gets more and more important to find a few simple meals that will amp up the flavor while also delivering a nice, rounded meal that the whole family will benefit from. It’s even more advantageous if you can put the whole meal in a single bowl – no muss, no fuss, just a perfect, self-contained meal. Here are five easy healthy dinner bowls to get you started.
West African Peanut Stew
With peanuts and Bailan African Hot Chicken Spice at its center, this recipe is your perfect introduction to African flavors and a way to get a dinner bowl made quick. You simply season and cook your chicken, blend up the vegetables, then cook them in the spice mix as well. Add your chicken stock, peanut butter, followed by chicken and veggies, and serve it on rice, sweet potatoes or plantains.
Berbere Vegetable Soup
Our Berbere Vegetable Soup is a meal on its own. With rich, filling coconut oil, our Berbere Spice and low sodium veggie broth and veggies, you’ve got a balanced bowl that will leave everyone feeling satisfied. It’s also an easy preparation of chopping everything up, simmering it, adding the broth, and then cooking the vegetables in it.
Bailan Chili Beans
With Bailan Chili Beans, you’re getting a quick chili bowl with very little hassle. It features ground meat (though you could also use veggie crumbles) and our special Ras el Hanout and Piri Piri seasoning as the stars. You simply sautee the onions, brown the meat, mix the rest in for 15 minutes and you’ve got a meal fit for the family.
Shrimp with Cape Malay Curry
The Shrimp with Cape Malay Curry makes for a decadent meal that, typically, takes very little time. The South African Curry – Cape Malay mix does a lot of the heavy lifting, and the coconut oil brings out the delicious natural flavors of the shrimp.
Jollof Rice with Bailan Spice
Our Jollof Rice with Bailan Spice takes this traditional dish and adds our African Hot Chicken Spice to help the chicken or beef sing. We recommend cooking this in a rice cooker to get the best flavor and texture. You simply need your protein, veggies, rice, vegetable oil and our spice blend, and you’re on your way to a taste of Nigeria, Ghana, and the many other places that traditionally serve Jollof Rice.
Summary
The two keys to a healthy dinner bowl are getting a little bit of everything you need – veggies, protein, healthy fats – into your bowl, and spicing it well, so that it not only is more filling and satisfying, but so that no one gets bored of it. These recipes are tried and true, reliable workhorses as far as dinner bowls go. The extra kick comes from our spice mixes, that bring that taste you’ve been missing to dishes you’re going to treasure.