Easy Rice Bowls

This has been a favorite the last few months, and is infinitely adaptable depending on your preferences and what's on hand for protein/veg. I wanted to call these "Korean rice bowls" as it's based on various recipes I found online with that bent...though I make absolutely no claims of authenticity.

Anyway, it turns out that soy sauce + brown sugar + sriracha makes an absolutely delicious sauce. Super easy to whip together. I've always made this with ground beef, but I think you could use any ground meat (turkey, pork or even meat substitute), chicken, or crumbled tofu (I'll probably try that next). I recommend cooking the protein with chopped onion & garlic (and grated fresh ginger if you have it...you could also add ground ginger to the sauce), but those are basically the "requirements."

I like having some kind of green vegetable with this - simply stir-fried or steamed and seasoned with salt/pepper. Maybe some garlic, but the protein + toppings are pretty flavorful so the vegetables don't need much. Pictured below with brussels sprouts...broccoli, asparagus and/or zucchini are good. If you add a good amount of veg to the bowl, you can stretch out the meat further.

I happened to have cucumber, carrot and jalapeño on hand, so I decided to make a quick pickled vegetable mix to add to the bowls. This is also optional, but delicious. You can do just carrots or cucumber, and/or daikon radish if you happen to find that. Jalapeno optional but adds a nice kick.

The quantities for everything are super-flexible; it is really hard to mess this up. Serve over steamed rice (or quinoa or cauliflower rice if that's your jam), and if you have green onion and/or cilantro and/or sesame seeds, and/or a squeeze of lime, those are all good garnishes. So this is a recipe for the "deluxe" version, but feel free to omit, substitute and use what you have/like!

Pickled Vegetables
Prepare this first - you can do it a day or a few hours in advance. Leftovers keep in the fridge. You don't need to completely cover the vegetables with the brine (just stir a couple times while refrigerating), so feel free to scale quantities down or up depending on how much you want to make.

- Any quantity of thinly sliced cucumber, julienned carrots and/or daikon radish, and/or some very thinly sliced jalapeno
- 1/2 cup vinegar (rice wine or apple cider are good)
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 Tbl sugar

Mix together brine ingredients until dissolved. Pour over vegetables and refrigerate for at least 30 min.

Start your pot of rice now...

Beef or other protein:
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 2 Tbl brown sugar
- sriracha or other hot sauce to taste (you can always add more, but the sugar mellows it out a good bit so keep that in mind)
- optional: a few shakes of toasted sesame oil
- 1 lb ground beef or other ground meat, or drained & crumbled firm tofu
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 or more garlic cloves, minced
- fresh ginger, grated/minced (optional)

Mix together soy sauce, brown sugar, sriracha & sesame oil. Heat a large saute pan or wok over medium high, add a small amount of oil and cook ground meat/protein. Try to get some good browning on it. (If cooking a vegetable, start stir-frying it now.)  If the ground beef sheds a lot of fat, drain some of it off. Add onion, garlic & ginger and continue cooking until softened. Add the sauce and cook just a minute or so until it coats the meat.

Build bowls with rice, beef, vegetables and the pickled vegetables. Garnish with any or all of the following: chopped green onions, cilantro, sesame seeds, more sriracha, a squeeze of lime.