A nutritious black bean and rice bowl with leftovers and pantry staples is a favorite Friday meal.Preparing the ingredients is quick and easy, allowing dinner to be on the table within 45 minutes.I like adding chopped avocado, onions and a drizzle of lime juice for extra flavor.<\/p>\n
I love to cook, but sometimes answering the question of what\u2019s for dinner can be stressful\u2014especially during the week, when deadlines and other commitments take priority. And when I\u2019m hungry at the end of the day and don\u2019t have a dinner plan in place, that\u2019s when I\u2019ll raid the fridge for random ingredients in hopes of throwing something together quickly, or order takeout.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m not a meal prepper, you will find me batch-cooking big pots of soup<\/a> or casseroles on Sundays (when I have the time and space to enjoy the process of cooking) and reheating the leftovers on the following days. When we\u2019ve run out of leftovers, my husband and I make quicker, less complex meals, like our go-to Friday night meal: black beans and rice.\n<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t always a big fan of beans, but I started eating them regularly during the pandemic since they are cheap and shelf-stable. I like the convenience of canned beans<\/a>, which require no prep work other than reheating them. Our beans and rice dish came about by simply throwing our favorite ingredients into a bowl with some black beans: steamed white rice<\/a>, saut\u00e9ed kale<\/a>, sliced avocado, chopped onion and a squeeze of lime juice.\n<\/p>\n To make it, I start by rinsing some white rice<\/a> and popping it into a rice cooker<\/a>. The rest of the meal comes together pretty quickly, so I\u2019ll usually put the rice on about an hour before we want to eat so that it\u2019s cooked and ready to go. My rice cooker takes 45 minutes to make white rice, and if we want to eat our meal as soon as the rice is finished cooking, I start prepping the other ingredients when there are 15 minutes left on the timer. I chop an onion, slice up an avocado and cut a lime in half.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Next, I dump a can of black beans, liquid and all, in a saucepan, add most of the chopped onion (I like to reserve a bit for topping the bowls) and warm it over medium heat. When the liquid around the beans starts bubbling, I turn the heat down to low, giving it a mix to ensure the onions soften. I don\u2019t rinse the beans because I like the flavor the liquid adds to the dish, but I do drain them slightly when assembling the dish by tilting the serving spoon full of beans along the side of the saucepan. If you\u2019re watching your sodium intake, you can buy no-salt-added canned beans and\/or rinse and drain them.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Then on another burner, I saut\u00e9 some kale with olive oil and Tony Chachere\u2019s Creole Seasoning in a frying pan. We really like kale, so I\u2019ll usually saut\u00e9 two pans worth so there\u2019s enough to enjoy with any leftovers.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n To serve, I grab my favorite handmade ceramic pasta bowls<\/a> and build the dish. I spoon some rice into each bowl, then top it with the warmed black beans and onions. The saute\u00e9d kale and avocado slices are placed around the beans and rice, and I finish with a sprinkle of raw chopped onion and a squeeze of lime juice. And that\u2019s it!\n<\/p>\n It\u2019s a simple, tasty, budget-friendly dish<\/a>. There are so many swaps you can make to suit your preferences or use up whatever is in your pantry and fridge. You can swap the white rice with brown rice<\/a> or a wild rice mix, change the type of beans, veggies and seasonings, or top it with your favorite hot sauce. I like to throw an over-easy egg on top of leftovers the next day. I love that this whole dish comes together in about 45 minutes (less if you use leftover or precooked rice), and the main ingredients are pantry staples we almost always have on hand.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n As far as nutrition goes, this black bean and rice bowl is packed with anti-inflammatory ingredients like avocado and kale<\/a>. The black beans offer filling fiber<\/a>, and if you substitute the white rice with brown rice<\/a>, you can boost the fiber even more. This meal is also good for your gut, thanks to the resistant starch in black beans<\/a> and prebiotics in onions<\/a>. As a whole, it\u2019s a well-rounded dish with carbs, healthy fat and protein.\n<\/p>\n Having go-to meals like this rice and beans bowl takes the pressure off of dinner planning\u2014especially when you keep your kitchen stocked with most (if not all) of the ingredients you need. If you\u2019re planning on making this dish at home, I\u2019d recommend shopping around for an avocado a few days beforehand or using one of these ripening techniques<\/a> to ensure you have a perfectly ripe avocado by dinnertime. Having a healthy dinner doesn\u2019t require a complicated recipe or hours in the kitchen; it can be as simple as putting your favorite nutritious ingredients into a bowl and digging in. I hope this \u201crecipe\u201d inspires you to build your own quick, healthy and delicious dinners at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A nutritious black bean and rice bowl with leftovers and pantry staples is a favorite Friday meal.Preparing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-118784","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}