Southwestern Cauliflower Rice Bowls
An easy plant-based, gluten-free, grain-free lunch or dinner recipe made with cauliflower rice, roasted sweet potatoes, black beans, kale, carrots, cherry tomatoes, and avocado then drizzled with a creamy cilantro avocado sauce and garnished with hemp seeds.
Calling all bowl lovers! Today I’m bringing you a super easy, super nourishing bowl recipe that can easily be added to your weekly menu! These Southwestern Cauliflower Rice Bowls are full of flavor loaded with cauliflower rice, black beans, roasted sweet potatoes, kale, carrots, avocado, and tomatoes.
If you’ve been visiting my blog recently, you’ll notice I am incorporating more grain-free eats into the rotation. I think that eating grains has been flaring up my inflammation, so I’ve been experimenting more with grain-free recipes (which more plants never hurt anyone anyway, am I right?) So I replaced white/brown rice with riced cauliflower in these Southwestern Cauliflower Rice Bowls and honestly, I didn’t miss the rice one bit! Simply sauté your cauliflower rice with your favorite taco seasoning (gluten-free of course) and then load on the other veggies! I certainly don’t have enough cauliflower rice recipe on this blog as of now, other than my SRIRACHA PEANUT CAULIFLOWER RICE BOWLS, so if you’re a fan, more of that to come this year!
The cilantro avocado sauce is made with just 6 simple ingredients and is perfect drizzled overtop. The leftovers, dare I say if you have any, would make one bomb a** lunch the next day too! I’m all about cook-once-eat-twice around here. My 3 year old son ate all of his bowl too #victoryformom I feel so good about exposing him to so many great, nourishing foods in one easy meal!
Now depending on how much cauliflower rice you make for these Southwestern Cauliflower Rice Bowls, you may have leftover black beans, sweet potatoes, kale carrots and tomatoes and that sets you up for a really great chips & dip or nacho situation, so don’t throw any extras away, which if you’re like me you get anxiety trowing any food away. I’m always trying to get creative with leftovers.
You’ll want to get the sweet potatoes roasting in the oven first, as that’s what takes the longest in this bowl recipe. You can certainly make your own cauliflower rice, but I happened to find it in the frozen section at my local grocery store, which really cut back on time spent preparing it. Just make sure if you do buy cauliflower already riced, that it doesn’t have any additional ingredients or preservatives. Next, you’ll blend the sauce ingredients together, load up everything in your bowls and presto! I chose to garnish my bowls with raw hemp seeds for some added healthy fats and essential fatty acids, protein, vitamin E, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, iron and zinc (powerhouse little seeds aren’t they?!), but that’s totally optional.
Hope you love these bowls as much as my family and I did! As always I love to see your re-creations of my recipes so be sure to tag me on Instagram or Facebook!
Southwestern Cauliflower Rice Bowls
An easy plant-based, gluten-free, grain-free lunch or dinner recipe made with cauliflower rice, roasted sweet potatoes, black beans, kale, carrots, cherry tomatoes, and avocado then drizzled with a creamy cilantro avocado sauce and garnished with hemp seeds.
Ingredients
- 20 oz frozen cauliflower rice
- 1 tablespoon gluten-free taco seasoning
- 5 stalks kale (I used Lacinato Kale)
- 15 oz can organic black beans, drained and rinsed
- 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- salt, to taste
- 2 avocados (1.5 for serving and half for the sauce)
- shredded carrots
- organic tomatoes (grape or cherry)
- hemp seeds
- fresh cilantro
Creamy Cilantro Avocado Sauce
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, loosely packed
- 1/2 avocado
- 1/2 cup flax milk (or other plant milk)
- 1/2 lime, juiced
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.
- Peel and dice your sweet potatoes, then place them onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast for about 25 minutes, until they start to crisp up.
- Meanwhile, prepare your other veggies.
- Place your frozen cauliflower rice in a large skillet with about 1 tablespoon olive oil. Saute over medium heat for about 15 minutes, then add 1 tablespoon of taco seasoning and stir to combine. Turn down the heat to low and let it simmer until the sweet potatoes are done.
- Make the Creamy Cilantro Avocado Sauce by blending all sauce ingredients together in your blender until smooth.
- Spoon some cauliflower rice in your bowls, then top with roasted sweet potatoes, black beans, carrots, kale, avocado, tomatoes, hemp seeds (optional), and sauce.
- Refrigerate any leftovers and enjoy with chips or as nachos!
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I was worried about trying this recipe out. I’ve never used taco seasoning (let alone seen it) and I wasn’t sure how everything would taste together. It was perfection! So good! The cook time for the sweet potatoes was spot on too, I cut them into tiny cubes just to be sure they were soft enough to chew with everything else. They weren’t mashed texture though which was great.
Thank you for the recipe!
Yayyy!!! I’m so so glad to hear you liked it! Thank you for your kind comment, means a lot! ???
I made this twice. The first as written and the kale just didn’t mesh well with the other ingredients. It’s so tough and fibrous! The second time I replaced kale with lightly steamed spinach and found that to be an improvement. I roasted the cauliflower instead of ricing it and threw that into the bowl. It was a healthy tasty meal!
Hi Maria, I like your modifications 😁 to make the kale more palatable you can massage it with a little oil and lemon juice for about 5 minutes and then add to the bowls 👍🏻 glad you enjoyed it otherwise!
Delicious! Just made this for dinner & it was super flavorful — thank you Gina. Xoxo.
Aw yay! I’m so glad you enjoyed this meal! 😊 thanks for the kind comment! ❤️