The Lazy Genius Podcast - #107 - Food in a Bowl: Basics

Episode Date: May 6, 2019

This episode is the first of a three-part series about serving food in a bowl. My family’s favorite foods are served in a bowl from pasta and soup to ice cream and cereal, but this series focuses more on dinner bowls, meals that are made up of multiple components layered together, not necessarily soup. In this episode, I break down the four basic building blocks to a successful dinner bowl so you can start where you are and use the ingredients your family already likes to add food bowls to your meal plan. Companion Links for This Episode The Swap is back with friends in The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle, but only until tonight (Monday, May 6th) at 11:59 p.m. EST. If you want The Swap, don’t sleep on it. If your preferred food in a bowl is soup, listen to The Lazy Genius Makes Soup. Find the five quick and easy rice and ground beef bowl options on the blog. Join me live on Instagram around 12:15 p.m. EST on Thursday to chat about week one of food bowls. Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everybody. You're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. I am Kendra Adachi and I am here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today we're starting a three-part series that I am so excited about, food in a bowl. My family eats so much food in a bowl from pasta and soup to the obvious cereal and ice cream for this series. I'm talking more about dinner bowls, meals that are made up of multiple components that are layered together, not necessarily soup. If you want to know how to make soup, I can help you. I have an episode for that. It is called, wait for it, the lazy genius makes soup. And I'll be sure to have a link in the show notes, or you can just scroll down in your podcast app. It's episode 54, and you can listen there. For today, though, we want to learn how to put together a delicious meal that is made up of lots of different ingredients that happen to make friends in a bowl. There is something about eating food out of a bowl, especially beautiful food that is so comforting and lovely, even in the warm weather that is heading our way now. So in this first episode, we're going to

talk about the basic building blocks of a dinner bowl. Next week in part two, we'll talk about the actual flavor combinations. And in part three, we will talk all kinds of hacks and how-toes to make dinner bowls feel like one of your easier dinner options rather than one of the more complicated ones. Now, before we jump into the basics of dinner bowls, I want to give you a quick heads up about something really cool that is coming to an end in a couple of days. We all want better, more creative, more sane ways to keep our homes, which is probably one of the reasons that you listen to this podcast. Well, right now, for just a couple more days, the ultimate homemaking bundle is available. If you have never heard of ultimate bundles, it is a fantastic,

kind of almost magical situation where this company, Ultimate Bundles, they gather up the best of the best in terms of online courses, printables, and ebooks from all over the internet, and then they bundle them together for you to get for one low price. The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle, it closes May 6th, and it has almost $3,000 worth of resources, yes, to help you clean better, organize better, and all kinds of home things better. And it's $30 for real. Three grand for 30 bucks. And here's the great news. The swap is in this year's bundle. Just so fun. I have an ebook called The Swap, the Lazy Genius Guide to Decluttering for Life. And buying this bundle is the only way to get the swap for at least another six months or so. I was really tired of fashioning together like some kind of decluttering process from lots

of different voices. So I made my own process and then put it in a book and it is available for you. And it has helped a lot of you already. But if you have not yet purchased the swap, getting it as part of the ultimate homemaking bundle is a great move. Even if you have already bought the swap, which I thank you very much. This bundle is a mega, mega awesome value. It's amazing. It's such an amazing resource with all kinds of resources to make your homemaking experience easier, prettier, all the things. So there's definitely something for everyone. If you are interested in checking it out and getting the swap included, there is a link in the info for this episode on your podcast app, or also in the show notes for this episode, which is at the lazy genius collective.com

slash lazy slash bowl one. That's the number one spelled out all lowercase. bowl one. The bundle goes away on May 6th. So be sure to check it out before it's gone. And my beloved Nestor, my home guru, has this great resource. It's amazing. Her summer seasonal class that helps you get ready for summer that I have used and absolutely love. It's in the bundle too, including like over a hundred more things. So be sure to check it out. There's a link in the info that you can learn more. Okay. The basics of a food bowl. Let's do this. Here is your one rule and the most important thing about making dinner bowls. You must have contrast. Contrast moves a dinner bowl from being just like it's fine to an absolute delight.

Contrasting temperatures, hot and cold, contrasting textures, creamy, crunchy, meaty, crispy. I don't know a whole lot of texture words. It's okay. Contrasting flavors. sweet, salty, spicy, tangy, bright, things like rice that are neutral. You might feel a little overwhelmed about putting together. So I'm like crazy contrasting dinner bowl from scratch. But don't worry, we're going to get to building it in just a second because I know there are so many options. But here's what I hear from you guys. I personally, I think that dinner bowls are one of the easiest, prettiest, tastiest meals out there. But I hear the opposite. from many of you. You feel a little bit intimidated by dinner bowls, mostly because there are just

so many options. And you might mess it up and it feels like so much work and all the things. So here's your homework for this episode. Make a dinner bowl this week from what you already have. Build a bowl from ingredients and cooking skills. Do you hear me? Ingredients and skills that you already have. It doesn't have to be 17 ingredients and super complicated. We're are going to build simply and build well. To build a bowl, you need four main building blocks. The base, which is usually some kind of grain, protein, toppings, and sauce. You could say a fifth component could be vegetables, but those can show up as part of the base mixed in with the protein or in the toppings. So we can call that kind of like a subcategory a little bit. But if you have those four

components, base, protein, toppings, sauce, you have dinner in a bowl. And here is the natural thing that often happens as you build a bowl with these four components. You get natural contrast. It truly happens without a lot of thought as long as you have those four building blocks. It naturally shows up. I will show you with a super easy dinner bowl. Okay, like a basic burrito bowl. We'll just pretend we're at Chipotle. You have, gosh, I love Chipotle so much. You have, you have, a base of white rice. Your protein is black beans and shredded chicken. Okay. Your toppings are avocado and crushed tortilla chips and your sauce is actually salsa. Like if you're doing this at home, like just like from a jar, okay? Super basic, also delicious. Now let's look at the contrast that

that simplicity offers. That was what six ingredients total really? I mean, they're flavored spices and things, but you know what I'm saying. Okay, so like you have both hot things and cold things. You got hot rice and meat and beans and then cold or like more or less room temperature with the avocado and the salsa and the chips. Okay, texture. You've got like that, you know, like that carbly rice texture that I don't know how to describe, but you know what I mean. Creamy, but also kind of like meaty beans with a bite. You've got tender chicken. The salsa is smooth. The avocado is creamy and the chips are crunchy. And then flavor, the rice is neutral. Maybe the meat and the beans are like a little spicy. The salsa is also spicy, but it's fresher. So it's a different kind of spicy. The avocado is

mild and cooling and kind of neutral also. And then those chips are like really salty and, you know, tastes like chips. You're getting a really nice dinner bowl from pretty basic ingredients. Now, if you just had rice and beans with salsa on top, it would be delicious. but it's not quite the same experience because there's not a lot of textual contrast especially. But when you add the creamy avocado and the crunchy chips, that contrast is elevated, and which means the dinner bowl is elevated. You're adding kind of a punch that makes the bowl and more pleasant experience to eat and to look at. So your singular rule for dinner bowls is contrast. And your building blocks to put together that contrast are base, protein,

toppings and sauce. Let's look at some options for those because sometimes we don't know what to consider until someone tells it it's okay. So we're going to do that together. Okay, let's start with the base. The obvious options are rice, white rice, brown rice, wild rice, other grains like quinoa and barley and pharaoh, faro, faro, fero, noodles like regular pasta, soba noodles, udon noodles, any kind of a noodle, even like a pack of ramen, mashed and creamy things like polenta, mashed potatoes, smashed sweet potatoes. If you are grain-free, you could do things like tofu, cauliflower couscous, or cauliflower rice, spaghetti squash, cabbage, like a, like slaw, or even roasted vegetables. Your base doesn't have to be bland at all, but it is often an easy neutral backdrop for just

about anything else you want to put on it. Now, if you use roasted vegetables that are heavily spiced as your base, your toppings and your sauce might need to be a little more mild to kind of keep that contrast alive. Otherwise, everything is competing for attention because everything is highly flavored. I'm guessing a lot of you feel like, you know, it's like always rice. Why is it always rice? But 90% of our family dinner bowls are rice, truly. There are so many, any ways you can take rice, you guys? So I just want to give you permission. Don't feel like you're being boring if you mostly use rice. Just because you can use an ingredient, like of all those that I listed, it doesn't mean that you have to or that you have to change up the base every single ding dang time.

Just build with rice or whatever base makes the most sense for you and get the hang of building bowls with that base before you feel the pressure to move on to every other option. Start small, you guys. Use what ingredients you already have and already know how to make and already kind of like. Start where you are. Don't overcomplicate it. Okay, so that's base. Next, let's talk about protein. There are the obvious things like, you know, animals and fish. We mostly know what protein is. You also have beans and lentils, tofu, eggs. The thing with dinner bowls is you want everything to be mostly bite-sized. So especially when we're talking about protein. Like if you're dealing with meat,

you want that meat to already be bite-sized in the bowl. You don't take a roasted chicken thigh and stick it on top of a bowl. It's one utensil only. Dinner bowls should not need knives. So ground meat, meat cooked in a crock pot and then shred it up, meat that you grill or saute, and then it's like sliced or chopped, that kind of thing. Now my favorite protein for a dinner bowl is ground beef,

just because it's already by size. It's already ground. It's so easy. It's not super expensive, and it can go in so many directions. And even if you keep the seasoning, like really simple with salt and pepper, like truly brown, ground meat with salt and pepper, you can alter your flavors on the toppings and the sauce and make a ton of different bowls. I will give you a couple of options at the end of the episode to help you think through your dinner bowl this week. But just remember that whatever you do for protein, don't forget about contrast. That's our number one rule. So just remember that as you build the rest of your bowl. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life,

whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dacher Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay, so before we move on to toppings, I do want to say that dinner bowls are the perfect place to use leftover meats from other meals. So you can like grab an extra piece of change your like chicken and then, you know, shred it up and put it on a bowl.

If you have taco night and you have some extra taco meat, you can use that for a dinner bowl. Maybe you buy rotissory chicken for enchiladas or something and you have like a couple of handfuls of chicken left. Perfect for dinner bowls. so or lunch bowls but you know what I mean so it's um it's just really easy to stretch your protein with this kind of meal so it is a great way to have great ingredients without spending a lot instead of grilling four steaks for four people because that's you know the main entree or

whatever you grill one really great steak you slice it up and you make steak bowls so you get great steak but you spent 10 bucks instead of 40 bucks because you don't eat you know everybody can share a steak because you have all the other things too. All right, including, let's move on a toppings, the other things. So many options, you guys, like so many. Everything really could be a topping. Leftover cooked vegetables, fresh vegetables that you chop up really fast, like making a quick slaw, pickled vegetables, any kind of vegetable in any kind of way. Herbs, nuts, avocado, whatever. Like, again, you want to think about how to build contrast as you build your bowl and toppings are a brilliant way to amp up the contrast in your bowl in really big ways.

If you need a visual of like topping options, just imagine a salad bar. Anything you see on a salad bar would be a great topping for a dinner bowl. And imagine like a good salad bar, like a whole food salad bar. Or what was the restaurant? I feel like there was like a Chili's sort of restaurant that used to have Ruby Tuesday. Was it Ruby Tuesday that had? I realize no one can confirm this for me as I'm sitting here. I feel like there's a restaurant that had just a really good salad bar. But you can use that as kind of a visual cue as you think about possibilities. Toppings are also your best place to add cold, fresh, bright flavors and textures to your bowl. So basically because anything is an option, it's hard to go into detail right now because it's all kind of detail.

Like toppings could be anything. But as you start building your dinner bowl this week, just keep it really. simple, okay? Maybe limit yourself to two toppings to keep the pressure low. Again, just because you can use something doesn't mean you have to. You can start small. Toppings, you need to start small because literally anything can be a topping. Finally, sauce. Sauce is where a bowl of food becomes a dinner bowl. I get a lot of questions about sauce because I think you guys know the importance of the sauce in this. Yes, it is important, but it can also be simple. Simple. Salsa is a sauce. Salad dressing from a bottle is a sauce. Barbecue sauce is a sauce. You think you need to be like Antony from Queer Eye and whip up all these sauces on a whim, but the grocery store has bottles of great stuff that you can use. So don't feel like you're doing it wrong if you pour a bottle of something onto your bowl. I use Yum Yum sauce from the store almost always. We rarely make our own sauces.

sometimes, but hardly ever because it's a lot easier to not, because I usually spend time on the other stuff instead of the sauces. So like we have yum yum sauce. It's literally called yum sauce. It's the like pink Asian sauce. You can get it at Target now, like all the places. It's a little sweet. It's creamy. Brings everything together. It's a pretty color. I will also sometimes do like saracha alongside that if I need to amp up the spice. Let's see, we have red salsa always, green salsa, hot sauce. You can use any kind of dipping, like ranches of sauce that you can put in a bowl. You can thin out sour cream with lime juice.

There are just so many. The runny egg, the runny egg, the runny yolk from an egg from like a fried egg counts as a sauce. More than likely you're overthinking it or you think that it has to be homemade. Now, there are definitely fun recipes out there for sauces, but I personally am still in the, like, use what I have in no phase of making dinner bowls, mostly because I'm just not in a place to spend a lot of extra brain power on trying a bunch of homemade sauces. The internet is full of homemade sauces, which is part of the problem, right? But you don't have to make all of them. Just try one. Just try one that sounds good. Start small. The internet is not going anywhere, which leads me to this. You do not have to know

how to make every possible dinner bowl in order to make one good one. Just start with one. start as simply as you can with what you already have and know. Get used to the process and experience of making and eating a dinner bowl before you feel like you have to know how to make 10 different sauces from scratch and pickle your own onions and all the things. You really just need to have like one or two options and start building simply. So rather than make a sauce for your dinner bowl this week, just use what you have like in a bottle. See how delightful barbecue sauce or salsa can be on your bowl.

You can expand your options as you learn what you like and go from there. Okay, now as we wrap up this first episode on food in a bowl, let's build a few dinner bowls using rice as a base and ground beef as the protein. And you will see how varied the options can be just from using different toppings and sauces. So we're starting with plain white rice and ground beef seasoned with salt and black pepper. It's about as basic as you can get. okay so option one your toppings are avocado and corn that's cut off the cob so corn kernels and then your sauce is a spicy salsa so you get crunchy creamy sweet spicy spicy great textures because you got the

crunch from the corn so yummy option two so you got your rice and your meat your toppings are diced cucumber and pickled ginger from the jar which is one of my personal dinner bowls secret weapons. And then your sauce is yum yum sauce. So you get like a bright, crunchy freshness from the cucumber, a spicy bite and some really pretty color from that pickled ginger. And then this like creamy mild sweetness from the yum sauce that brings it all together. Option three. Your toppings are sauteed diced onions and peppers and then chopped peanuts. And your sauce is that carrot ginger dressing from a bottle, like the kind that you get at the Japanese steakhouse. So you have like crispy, crunchy, spicy, spicy from the peppers, tangy from that dressing, sweet from

the dressing. Again, contrast. Option four with your rice and meat. Your toppings might be roasted sweet potatoes and black beans from a can. And then your sauce is bottled barbecue sauce. Finish that with a little cilantro or like a squeeze of lime to add some freshness and brightness. So good. option five toppings are dice cherry tomatoes and black olives and your sauce is like legit pasta sauce from a jar

it's like a pizza bowl kind of you can even sprinkle parmesan on top of it so you see how it doesn't have to be super complicated two toppings and a sauce on rice and meat done and you might be asking about like ratios like well how much do i put on it and i always feel like get it wrong well everyone's different your personal preference is going to be different from mine and from someone else's it might be eating a dinner bowl alongside you. So just notice as you're, like there have been a number of times I've made a dinner bowl and I'm eating it. And I get further to the bottom and I'm like, I need more sauce.

I'm out of sauce. And I go and I drizzle some more sauce on it, throw some more green onion on it and keep eating. You know, so if you, you're not doing it wrong, if you're like, oh, I think this needs more of that. Go put more of that on it. And you're doing great. You're doing great. The beauty of eating this way.

is that everyone can really just customize it however they want. But you don't have to have every option under the sun for this to work. Simple is usually better. A lot of you have asked about doing this with picky kids who don't like their food to touch, and we will talk about that in part three. So hang tight. But I am going to stop for today because we do have two more weeks to drill down into other aspects of food and a bowl. But this week, I want you to make a dinner bowl. Remember, contrast is king. That is your one Focus, right? And you can create contrast in lots of ways using any of the four building blocks of a bowl. Your base, your protein, toppings, and sauce. So this week, just use what you already have and make what you already know. Layer it and put it in a bowl. And if you're worried about it being a hard sell for

family dinner, just start with your own personal lunch. Make an extra half cup of rice at dinner. Save a little chicken from your tortilla soup at dinner. and then build a bowl for lunch the next day. You can absolutely do this. If you haven't yet, it's likely because your expectations are too high and you're overthinking it and that you think you need to know every option

to make just one bowl. You don't. You can do this and are far more likely to do this once and then many times after by just starting simply with what you have now and already know today. Okay, that's it for today, you guys. I'm so excited about the series.

So next week we're going to talk about cuisines and flavor combos. And then our third and final week will be hacks and how-toes to make dinner bowls become an easier, more regular part of your meals. And don't forget about the ultimate homemaking bundle. Oh my goodness, I cannot say that. It goes away on May 6th, so don't miss out. And remember, it has my decluttering e-book, The Swap, and literally $3,000 worth of other amazing homemaking resources for just,

$30. The link is in the show notes if you want to check it out. All right, you guys, thank you so much for listening. I'm so grateful for you. You can join me this Thursday on Instagram at the lazy genius between 12 and 1215 Eastern Time to ask me your questions about food and a bowl. So I will see you then and then again next Monday with our next episode in the series. And until then, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and I'll see you next time. just a B or B plus life, it's so dangerous to live that, more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it?

I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You, wherever you get your podcasts.