Easy vegan rice bowls loaded with roasted veggies, chickpeas, and other good-for-you ingredients. This easy plant-based, gluten-free recipe is family-friendly and can be easily customized based on the veggies you have on hand, PLUS, it’s also great for vegan meal-prep and can be served for either dinner or lunch.
Today, I'm sharing another quick and easy vegan dinner recipe: BBQ Chickpea and Veggie Bowls filled with roasted veggies and chickpeas and drizzled with zesty bbq sauce!
This vegan rice bowl recipe comes courtesy of fellow blogger and friend, Jenn Sebestyen who you may know from the website Veggie Inspired.
Her book, "The Meatless Monday Family Cookbook" was recently published and it's filled with family-friendly, quick, easy plant-based meals.
Jenn's publisher sent me a copy of the book to review and I'm so glad to now have it in my collection to turn to when I need some dinner inspiration.
What Kind of Recipes Will I Find in Meatless Mondays?
This book contains over 100 delicious, plant-based, and kid-approved dinner recipes, many of which can be on the table in 30-minutes or less.
The book also contains many tips for making ingredient swaps, stocking your kitchen, and for how to get your kids to help out with the recipes in the book.
In the book, you'll find recipes like:
- Vegan Cauliflower Steaks with Lentils and Romesco Sauce
- Thai Sweet Potato Curry
- Creamy Vegetable Noodle Soup
- Skillet Chickpea Chilaques
- Pumpkin Glazed Penne with Roasted Fall Vegetables
- Plus salads, pasta dishes, casseroles, delicious stews and more!
And of course, this recipe for veggie rice bowls!
Ingredients You'll Need
Everything you'll need is seen in the picture below.
I used a store-bought BBQ sauce when I made this recipe, but Jenn does have a recipe for her own BBQ sauce in the book. Either will work just fine!
Can Veggies Be Substituted? How About the Rice?
The great thing about rice bowl recipes is that swaps can be made, quite easily.
I love Jenn's recipe as it's written, but if you have allergies or don't like a particular veggie, swapping one or two out shouldn't be a problem.
As long as long as the veggie you're taking out has the same cooking time as the veggie you're adding in. You want to be sure it will cook through properly and finish in the same time as everything else.
Parsley can be substituted for the cilantro since I know there are many who don't like cilantro!
And if you don't want them to be brown rice bowls, feel free to use white rice, or if you're looking to take the rice out completely, quinoa would work great.
Steps to Make Vegetarian Rice Bowls
(Note: I’ve outlined the step-by-step on how to make this veggie rice bowl recipe here, but find the full recipe, ingredients, and directions at the end of this post.)
There are just a few steps to this recipe, it's an easy one.
After preparing all the vegetables, you'll split them between two baking sheets (picture on the left, below, only one pan is shown), toss with the oil, salt, and pepper and roast until the veggies have cooked through (picture on the right, below, only one pan is shown).
After the veggies and chickpeas have finished roasting, remove them from the oven and assemble the bowls by first adding the rice, topping with the roasted veggies and chickpeas, then the diced avocado and cilantro.
You'll then drizzle your BBQ sauce on top and that's it, your simple rice bowls are ready to serve!
This was a meal that was loved by my whole family, kids included! They were declared to be the best rice bowls, so I now have requests to make them again, soon 🙂 And I will!
You can serve these rice bowls for lunch or dinner, and they can even be pre-made for lunches throughout the week. To pre-make for serving later, do everything except adding the cilantro, avocado, and barbecue sauce.
To serve for lunch, simply reheat and then add the three toppings.
How Long Will They Keep In the Fridge?
Your vegan brown rice bowls will be fine in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
The Meatless Monday Family Cookbook is for Everyone
Whether you're vegan, vegetarian, have kids, don't have kids, or you're an omnivore looking for more meatless meals to add to your rotation...there are so many delicious vegan recipes in this book to choose from.
There's something for all tastes making it a great gift to yourself or to anyone on your list. (Note that the majority of the recipes in this book have an accompanying picture, but there are a few that don't, so keep that in mind if this is something that's important to you.)
If you buy a copy of "The Meatless Monday Family Cookbook," let me know which recipe you'll be making first (other than these roasted veggie rice bowls, of course!)
If you like this recipe, you may also like these other easy vegan dinner recipes:
- Vegan Fried Rice
- Vegan Chili Mac
- Taco Rice Bowls
- Vegan Bolognese
- One-Pot Cheesy Taco Pasta
- Vegan Gluten-Free Dinner Recipes
Vegan Rice Bowls
Suggested Equipment:
Ingredients:
- 1 can (15 ounces, 425 g, or 1 ½ cups) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 head broccoli, chopped into bite-size florets
- 2 red bell peppers, seeded and sliced (or colour of your choice)
- 1 red onion, halved and sliced
- 2 tablespoons (28 ml) olive oil
- ¼ teaspoon salt, or to taste
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
- 2 cups (390 g) cooked brown rice
- 1 1 avocado, peeled and pit removed, diced
- ¼ cup (4g) cilantro, chopped
- 1 cup (235 ml) BBQ sauce
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C, or gas mark 5). Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Spread out the chickpeas, broccoli, bell peppers, and onion on the baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and toss to coat. Spread them out in one even layer. Roast for 20 minutes, mix the veggies, and swap the pans in the oven so the one on top is now on the bottom. Roast for another 10 to 15 minutes until the veggies are starting to char and the chickpeas are crispy (they will continue to crisp up as they sit).
- Add ½ cup (98 g) of cooked rice to each of 4 bowls. Divvy up the roasted vegetables, diced avocado, and cilantro equally among the bowls. Drizzle with the BBQ sauce.
Recipe Notes:
- Please read all of the helpful info and FAQ above to ensure recipe success.
- Use your favourite store-bought BBQ sauce or make Jenn's Sweet and Spicy BBQ sauce from page 165 in the book.
- 2 pans are needed for the recipe so you don’t crowd everything onto one pan. If one pan is used, everything will steam and become soggy instead of roasting and becoming crisp. So best to place them on two pans.
- Leftovers will keep in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
- Nutrition info is based on 1 of 4 servings and is only to be used as a rough guide. Click to learn how nutrition info is calculated on this website.
Nutrition Info:
Reprinted with permission from Jenn Sebestyen and Fair Winds Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc. © 2019. All opinions and images are my own.
Kirsten says
This turned out SO good! Even my non vegan husband said it was delicious. I added some soy curls to up the protein even more. Definitely adding this to my saved recipe list!
Gwen Leron says
Thanks for coming back to leave your review, Kirsten, I appreciate it! I'm so happy to know it was enjoyed, I love the idea of adding soy curls!
Kirsten says
I’m a bit unclear about why you need 2 pans for this recipe and also what you are meaning in step 2 about switching pans. From the pics and other instructions it looks like everything is roasted on one pan. Could you explain?
Gwen Leron says
Hi Kirsten, I only show one pan in my pictures because I could not fit two pans in the picture properly.
2 pans are needed for the recipe so you don't crowd everything onto one pan. If one pan is used, everything will steam instead of roast. So best to place them on two pans.
However, if you have one very large pan and can fit all of the vegetables so they have enough space around them (like in the picture), then you can go ahead and do that, and in that case, you won't have to worry about swapping the positions of the two pans halfway through roasting, as stated in step 2.