HOW TO BUILD THE ULTIMATE HEALTHY BREAKFAST BOWLS

Begin your day with a well-balanced breakfast that’s packed with vitamins and protein. This post discusses my go-to method for creating the ultimate healthy breakfast bowls for a nutritious way to jump-start your day.

This post is sponsored by Rojo’s Salsa.

How to Build the Ultimate Healthy Breakfast Bowls | TheRoastedRoot.net #healthy #breakfast #glutenfree

How was your Thanksgiving, your Black Friday, and how’s that Cyber Monday going so far? Truth be told, I’ve never been much of a shopper, and I have a strong aversion to crowds, so I tend to skip that portion of the weekend…although I do partake in holiday food and spirits awfully heavily. My Thanksgiving was great! My mom made the Paleo Sweet Potato Casserole, Maple-Cinnamon Glazed Acorn Squash with Brussels Sprouts and Bacon, and the Pan Fried Green Beans with Pomegranate Seeds from my blog (bless her supportive nature), and my brother threw together some bomb mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and of course, roasted a beautiful turkey. My sister? Delish apps and dessert. Me? I prepared a total of zero foods, if you can believe it. Zilch. And it was such a glorious blessing! I contributed (and drank) the wines.

We’re probably all moving at half speed…or quarter speed….one-sixteenth speed…sloth speed…the opposite of light speed…basically we’re probably winning no races after taking a luxuriously long weekend and eating ourselves silly with Thanksgiving feastables. For this reason, I thought we could all kick off the week with super nutritious breakfast. Can we make it back on track? Can we push pause on the Hawaiian dinner rolls? The fudge and the stuffing and the cranberry sauce, oh my? I have the utmost of faith in us.

Let’s start a breakfast movement.

How to Build the Ultimate Healthy Breakfast Bowls | TheRoastedRoot.net #healthy #breakfast #glutenfree #paleo #whole30 #primal

I have divulged this in the past, but I’ll do so again: when I start my day with a well-balanced, healthful breakfast, I’m much more likely to continue making wise food choices throughout the day. If I start the day with a cinnamon roll? Game off – I’m probably eating sugar the rest of the day. But if my morning includes a nutritious bowl of veggies and eggs, I’m much more likely to succeed at eating healthy at my afternoon and evening meals as well. Not only are my food habits throughout the day hinged on my breakfast choices, but my overall mood and energy level is definitely effected as well. I find I need this kind of breakfast to sustain a solid energy level and good spirits while I’m be-bopping around through life.

If you’re simply looking to get back on track after the holiday festivities, or if you’re trying to make a point of changing habits in the coming New Year, these healthy brealfast bowls are your jam. Once you get the hang of them, they take no time at all to prepare, and you’ll find yourself looking forward to breakfast. You may even begin craving – do I daresay it – vegetables first thing in the morning.

I’ve been meaning to share this post with you for about 17,000 years because I legit eat a breakfast bowl that looks nearly identical to the ones you see in the photos every single morning. For the most part, I do a yam, kale, and scrambled egg situation, but when I wake up fungry and am feeling real hot n’ heavy, I let my hair down and throw in some bacon, black beans, cheese, and avocado. So essentially this post is my way of sharing my everyday brekkie with you. Bring your fork!

Let’s talk ingredient options. We have SO MANY!

Protein – eggs, bacon, sausage, chorizo, black beans, ham, tofu scramble
Greens – chard, kale, spinach, arugula
Veggies – yams (or potato of choice – red potatoes and white ), onions, butternut squash, zucchini squash, mushrooms, broccoli
Eggs – sunny side up, fried, poached, scrambled
Toppings – avocado (or guacamole), salsa, shredded cheddar or Jack cheese or feta, sour cream (or Greek yogurt), hummus, chopped onion, cilantro, etc.

I used Rojo’s Fire Roasted Medium Salsa as topping for these bowls. In case you’re new to Rojo’s, they are Mexican-style artisan-crafted salsas that are made with real, fresh-cut, premium ingredients. When I first tried the salsas, I was very pleasantly surprised by how fresh and homemade tasting they are. The Fire Roasted Medium salsa is made with roasted tomatoes, onions, and chipotle and jalapeno chiles, and contains very minimal sugar, which is always my preference as I like my salsas to have a pronounced chile flavor rather than tasting sweet.

SO! How do we make the ultimate healthy breakfast bowls? Four easy steps will take you to where you need to be…

1.) Cook the Meat – If you’re adding a breakfast meat, like bacon or sausage to these bowls, you can prepare it first in a skillet to render the fat. Once the bacon (or sausage) is cooked, remove it from the skillet, chop it into bits, and set aside. Use the bacon fat to cook the potatoes in step two. If you’re going vegetarian, you can omit this step and simply heat black beans (or beans of choice) on the stove top while you’re preparing the vegetables.

2.) Cook the Veggies – This is the most time-consuming part of the breakfast bowls, which gives you ample opportunity to multi-task around the kitchen, sip on coffee, start laundry, etc. I like using a cast iron skillet to achieve the optimal crispy outside on the potatoes. Often times, I throw in some onion or leek and let the two saute together. By the time the potato is cooked, the onion is usually nice and browned and flavorful. Once the potatoes are cooked, I toss in the greens, cover the skillet to allow them to wilt, and viola! We’re done with step one.

You can 200% get creative with the veggie portion of these bowls. Try using butternut squash (like in the Butternut Squash Hash I showed you a few years back), summer squash, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. I often use leftover roasted or grilled vegetables, which I simply re-heat in a skillet and turn into a scramble. After the veggies are cooked (or re-heated), this is when I add the cooked breakfast meat (bacon or sausage) back in to heat it back up. I find potatoes usually take about 15 minutes to cook to my liking, and I only need to stir them a few times, so during the veggie cooking process, I typically do householdly chores or work on the computer.

3.) Cook the eggs – At the tail end of the potato cooking portion of this process, I whisk up some eggs and prepare them a la scrambled in a separate skillet. Sometimes I’ll do a sunny side upper, but most of the time, I go for the scramble. NOTE: you can turn this whole vegetable into one big scramble, by adding the beaten eggs to the skillet with the veggies once the veggies are cooked. I take this route from time to time when I’m too lazy to clean an extra skillet.

4.) Top & Serve – the fun part! My all-time favorite toppings are salsa and avocado. If I have a batch of guacamole or hummus made up in the fridge, I’ll add those, but so long as I have my spicy salsa and my creamy avo, I’m happy as a clam. I do add grated cheese from time to time when I’m feeling wild and frisky. If I have black or pinto beans on hand, I’ll take the huevos rancheros approach (kind of like what you see in these bowls) and include them in the bowl for some added protein.

The best part about these bowls other than the fact that they’re quick, easy, delicious, and healthy is they can easily be made into a breakfast burrito or superfood breakfast taco type of situation. Just add ’tilla.