This will be your go-to grain bowl recipe (hopefully)

SOME NOTES:

This is not your typical recipe blog. Way to go sell this first recipe blog post.

Making grain bowls is actually kind of a lot of work. Well, only because there are a handful of things you’re cooking separately. So if you’re not about that life, we think you should still try it because it’s a good challenge. It’s 2020, we should all be challenging ourselves, right? The end result is really satisfying and we’d say it is a pretty healthy meal. That is also something to think about in 2020 - healthy living. For those of you who requested this to be on a blog and not a vlog on our instagram story, we know who you are and we know that you just didn’t want to see us talk. We see you. Just kidding!

This recipe is only good for 2 people, or if the two people are not that hungry maybe 3 people.

Equipments you’ll need:

1. Instant pot

2. Pyrex baking dish. Preferably, 15x10 in size

3. Baking sheet (two baking sheets if you don’t own a pyrex baking dish)

4. Medium sauce pan or a Dutch oven

5. Sieve/Strainer

6. Mixing bowl/Salad bowl

Ingredients:

• 1- 1.5 lbs boneless chicken thighs

• 1 cup of beef broth

• 1/2 cup soy sauce (low sodium if you prefer)

• 1/3 cup brown sugar - for the chicken only

• 1 tbsp sesame oil

• 3 cloves of garlic, minced - for the chicken

• 2 cloves garlic, smashed - for the grains

• 2 cups of farro or any grains you prefer

• 1 pint of grape tomatoes, cut in half

• 2 tbsp olive oil - for the sweet potatoes

• 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut in cubes

• 1 bunch kale

• 1 corn on the cob

• 1/4 cup lemon juice

• 2 tbsp brown sugar (substitute honey, if you’d like) - for the (BEST) kale salad

• 2 tbsp olive oil - for the (BEST) kale salad

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tsp pepper

Instructions:

Before you start any cutting and cooking:

1. Preheat your oven to 400° F

2. Grab your sauce pan/dutch oven and fill it up with water, about 1/2 full. Add some salt and the smashed garlic. Let it boil. Add water as time goes if you think it’s evaporating too much or too fast.
   

Now that those are going, let’s cook the chicken,

1. Wash your chicken thighs, very important to always wash your meat before cooking them. Pat dry.

2. Add chicken thighs into the instant pot. We skipped the seasoning part since we’re using soy sauce here. We don’t want to bloat with too much salt, but if you don’t have that type of relationship with salt, by all means season the chicken the way you’d like.

3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the beef broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, and minced garlic. Mix until sugar is dissolved.

4. Pour the mixture over the chicken then close the lid. Make sure the instant pot knob is set to seal.

5. Click the manual/pressure cook button and adjust time to 25 mins. Make sure that the pressure is on high setting.

6. Let it do its thing.
   

You’re probably asking, “what if I don’t own an instant pot?” You should get one. Just kidding! You can probably try the same exact recipe for the chicken in a slow cooker, just add more time. Now you’re like, “I also don’t own a slow cooker, what do I do?” Then to that we say, cook the protein however you want it to be in your grain bowl, man! We’re sure it will still taste good.

While that’s cooking, let’s make some roasted veggies,

1. Place your cut up sweet potatoes on the pyrex baking sheet (for a more moist veggie) or regular baking sheet (for a crispier roast) and coat it with olive oil.

2. Season with salt and pepper and give it a mix. Make sure that it’s pretty well coated.

3. In a separate baking sheet, line up your cut grape tomatoes and gently season with salt.

4. Place both veggies in the oven and cook for 35-40 mins. “But tomatoes aren’t vegetables!” You are correct, they are botanically considered as fruits but also considered vegetables by nutritionist. So, :shrug:

5. Once time is up, either turn the oven off and leave it in the oven until you’re ready for plating or take it out of the oven if you have enough counter space to set it aside.
   

Since we’re on the veggie part of this recipe, let’s take care of the corn. You’re probably asking, “1 corn on the cob? That’s not really enough.” Well if you love corn, double it, triple it. Do you, boo! But here’s a little secret we’ll tell you about corn,

1. Cook the corn with the husk on, in the microwave. 2 minutes each sides. You read that right, microwave. We found out many moons ago that this method is the best method to cook corn because it retains so much of the sweetness compared to boiling it. We can definitely have a healthy debate about this if you don’t agree.

2. Let it cool off.

3. Once cooled off, grab a bowl and cut the sides off the cob.

4. That’s it! If you’d like to season it with a little bit of salt and pepper, that’s cool too.

Assuming that your water is now aggressively boiling,

1. Add your farro, or whatever grain you end up using, in there. Careful not to splash hot water on yourself. So really, what we mean to say is, gently add your grains in there.

2. Tell Siri, Google, or Alexa to set a timer for 20 mins.

3. Leave it alone. By the way, this technique has been one of our favorite ways of cooking grains. It gives the best and most consistent results each time. It’s called the pasta method. If you think we just made that up, you can google it to confirm.

4. Once Siri, Google, or Alexa goes off, turn the heat off. Grab your sieve and pour the water out.

5. Let your grains cool off and dry.
   

Around this time, your instant pot has probably yelled or is yelling at you for attention. You have two options here, leave it to let the pressure off as is and continue on, or you can manually release the pressure by turning the little knob to venting. Whichever option you choose, it doesn’t really matter.

For both options, once you open the lid, here’s the next step you should do:

1. Turn that saute function on and let the sauce simmer/reduce down.

2. Check on it once in a while while you’re still preparing the rest of the ingredients for your bowl.

We hope by this time you’re still not too tired and you’re excited to keep going cause this one is the last thing you need to do. Remember, we warned you about this though. But trust us, it’s going to be worth it.

For the (BEST) Kale salad you’ll ever make:

1. Wash the kale. Very important. Dry it as much as you can

2. In a mixing bowl or salad bowl, tear the kale from their stems and roughly tear them into pieces. Think of it like those flowers you used to tear and say, “He loves me not. He loves me” when you were young or maybe some of us still do that.

3. Add olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and brown sugar (refer to above if you forgot how much. Or honey if you prefer that route).

4. Massage until it’s soft.

5. Taste it and adjust. Our hope is that you make this all the time because it’s so cheap, healthy and easy. The best part of this is that it doesn’t need any cooking, awesome right?!

Now that all your ingredients are cooked and ready, assemble your bowl! Be as creative as you can. Experiment with it!

We didn’t add additional sauce/dressing because we used the reduced sauce from the chicken. BUT, if you have an amazing sauce/dressing recipe you’d like to share, please share it in the comment section below. We’d so appreciate it!

We hope that you guys have enjoyed reading through this and are encouraged to try and make this. Let us know how your bowls turn out.