Roasted Broccoli Bulgur Bowl with Maple Dijon Tahini Sauce
This colorful whole food, plant based bowl is delicious, comforting, and ready in 30 minutes. The roasted tahini-coated broccoli, crispy chickpeas, crunchy cashews and pungent raw garlic and fresno pepper pack this wholesome dish with flavor that tastes even better the next day.
Taste the rainbow.
As much as I’m hooked on the vegan meat and cheese alternatives (and as much as that’s a main focus of my brand), there is nothing that makes me feel better than whole food, plant based meals. So of course I needed to roll out something colorful, easy, and wholesome!
The inspiration for this bowl started with a recipe I have made a couple of times — tahini roasted cauliflower. It is my favorite cauliflower dish I have ever made, from Christopher Kimball’s cookbook, Milk Street.
It starts with a flavorful tahini-based marinade, and is then jazzed up with chopped cashews, cilantro, and lemon juice upon exiting the oven. With my favorite flavors and textures of this dish in mind, I set out to create a similar, broccoli-centered dish. I did not reference the cauliflower recipe, as I wanted this creation to be authentically my own — uninfluenced by an exact blueprint of someone else’s hard work. Recipe research absolutely has its place, but I am careful to avoid copying.
At first, the tahini-roasted broccoli, fresno pepper, raw garlic, and cashews were the only elements of this dish. When it was delicious, I decided I needed to expand the recipe into a main meal.
In came the bulgur and roasted chickpeas in the second trial. I knew from cooking a previous recipe that bulgur would conveniently cook itself on the counter with some boiling water poured over it, and these additions would easily amplify the protein content of the dish (something vegans allegedly don’t get enough of — this is just a misconception!).
By this point, I had a solid foundation, but wasn’t entirely pleased with it. In the third trial, I omitted the black bean sauce and swapped the coconut aminos for soy sauce. It was delicious, but too dry. It needed sauce.
In an act of boldness, I added in some dijon mustard in the fourth trial, as well as sauce with the same ingredients but different ratios of the broccoli marinade. Boo-yah — recipe SENT (to the next level, that is).
This bowl is easy, delicious, and makes fantastic leftovers. For another easy whole food, plant based dish, I highly recommend my peanut tofu stir fry — it has made me feel the best of any recipe I’ve created so far (and it was my first one — the recipe that taught me what I am capable of!).
If you try this meal, please leave me a rating and review — your feedback means so much to me and my blog which is still in its infancy!
Roasted Broccoli Bulgur Bowl with Maple Dijon Tahini Sauce
Equipment
- Large bowl
- Large baking sheet
- Medium bowl
- Salad bowl (or reuse large bowl)
Ingredients
For roasted broccoli
- ¼ cup tahini
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- ½ tsp dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp water optional, use to thin sauce if tahini is thick
- 4 cups broccoli florets about 1 medium or large crown
For roasted chickpeas
- 15 oz canned chickpeas rinsed, drained, and pat dry
- 1-2 pinches kosher salt
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp chili powder
For bowl
- ⅓ cup bulgur
- 3-4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 fresno pepper minced
- ¼ cup unsalted cashews chopped
- ½ lemon juiced
For sauce
- 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 tsp soy sauce
- 2 tsp maple syrup
- 2 tsp tahini
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- ½ tsp dijon mustard
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Mix the broccoli marinade ingredients in a large bowl, add broken down broccoli, and mix to coat evenly.
- Rinse and drain a can of chickpeas. Pat dry. On a large baking sheet, spread broccoli on one half of the sheet and chickpeas on the other. Add a pinch or two of salt to the chickpea side, roast for 30 minutes.
- Place dry bulgur in a medium bowl, and heat up a few cups of water in a kettle or on the stove. Once boiling, pour the water over the bulgur to cover by a few inches. Let sit for 25 mins.
- Chop cashews, and mince garlic and fresno pepper. Mix sauce ingredients together.
- Remove chickpeas and broccoli from oven, add chili powder and garlic powder to chickpeas and mix with your hands. Drain bulgur and place it in a salad bowl. Add roasted broccoli and chickpeas, chopped cashews, garlic, and fresno pepper. Top with sauce and juice from half of a lemon. Mix it all together and enjoy!