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Falafel Bowl with Yellow Rice & Salad
The fastest trick for brown rice: a teaspoon of turmeric in the cooking water. It stains every grain golden in the time it takes to halve eight cherry tomatoes.
While the rice boils, the salad builds itself in a bowl — spinach on the bottom, then tomatoes, diced cucumber, thin-sliced red onion, and crumbled feta. The falafel gets four minutes in a hot pan with half a tablespoon of olive oil, flipped once, until the crust goes properly crisp.
Drain the rice, let it cool for one minute so it stops steaming, and pile everything together. 751 kcal, 89g carbs, 23g protein, 11g fiber. One bowl, one pan, 15 minutes.
The fastest trick for brown rice: a teaspoon of turmeric in the cooking water. It stains every grain golden in the time it takes to halve eight cherry tomatoes.
While the rice boils, the salad builds itself in a bowl — spinach on the bottom, then tomatoes, diced cucumber, thin-sliced red onion, and crumbled feta. The falafel gets four minutes in a hot pan with half a tablespoon of olive oil, flipped once, until the crust goes properly crisp.
Drain the rice, let it cool for one minute so it stops steaming, and pile everything together. 751 kcal, 89g carbs, 23g protein, 11g fiber. One bowl, one pan, 15 minutes.
Ingredients
- brown rice 3 ounces
- turmeric 1 teaspoon
- spinach 1 handful
- cherry tomatoes 8
- cucumber 0.5
- red onion 0.25
- feta cheese, crumbled 1 ounce
- olive oil 0.5 tablespoon
- falafel 8
Method
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Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the rice and turmeric. Cook until done according to the instructions on the package.
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Meanwhile, place the spinach in a deep plate or bowl. Halve the cherry tomatoes, dice the cucumber and slice the onion into half rings. Add all of this and the feta to the spinach in the bowl.
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Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the falafel balls for 4 minutes until golden brown. Flip them halfway through.
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Drain the rice and let it cool for 1 minute.
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Divide the rice with the falafel balls and salad into a bowl. Season with salt and pepper.
The turmeric you stir into the rice pot is there for more than color. Turmeric powder in a fat-containing meal delivered 44 times more curcumin to the bloodstream than the same dose as a supplement capsule (Nasef et al., 2019). This bowl's fat — from the pan-fried falafel, the crumbled feta, and the olive oil — meets that turmeric at the table.
Why This Works
Behind this recipe
Can I use white rice instead of brown?
Yes. White rice cooks faster and absorbs the turmeric color the same way. Brown rice contributes most of the 11g of fiber in this bowl — switching to white rice drops that significantly. If fiber matters to you, stick with brown.
Is 23g of protein enough for a meal?
It depends on your daily target. This bowl gets its 23g of protein from the chickpea-based falafel and the feta cheese — plant and dairy protein together. If you need more, the recipe tip suggests adding hummus or tahini, which adds both protein and fat without changing the bowl's character.
Does boiling turmeric in water actually do anything?
Curcumin — the compound behind turmeric's reputation — is fat-soluble. Boiling it in plain water extracts less curcumin than cooking it in fat. But a 2019 crossover trial found that turmeric powder delivered 44 times more curcumin than the same dose as a supplement capsule, as long as fat was present in the meal. This bowl has 34g of fat from falafel, feta, and olive oil, consumed alongside the turmeric rice.
