There comes a time when we are all faced with a handful of shit in our fridge, and an unwillingness or inability to find food otherwise. These are actually amongst my favorite times, because this is when I lazily and lovingly throw together a Garbage Bowl™. On shiner corners of the internet, these may be called Buddha bowls or Grain Bowls which evoke images of well photographed earthenware bowls overflowing with colorful and varying produce. And don’t get me wrong, those are delightful and I have been known to make an elaborate one from time to time. Sometimes however, you have like 4 mushrooms, and a handful of brussel sprouts, and like half a block of tofu, and you just fucking make it work. Et voila! A garbage bowl.
The main components of any garbage bowl are the following: a base, a protein, vegetables / fruits, sauce, garnish. The mind LITERALLY reels at all the possibilities. Another thing that you have to decide on at the beginning is flavor profile, I tend to stick to a few categories based on the random condiments, spices, and garnishes I have at any given time, but they are roughly: Asian-ish, Mediterranean-esq, and ¡Picante! The other crucial component to a garbage bowl is that it has to be relatively easy to throw together, you are a lazy garbage person remember? You seek nourishment, but you are also like, not trying to do anything crazy like leave the house.
Starting with what’s going to go at the bottom of the bowl, you have to pick your base. This could be anything from pasta, to barley or couscous, to quinoa. My go-to is usually rice though because it’s super easy to cook and I always have at least 10-15 mostly empty rice bags of all different sorts in my pantry. If it’s an Asian-ish bowl and I have sushi rice, I will make that. If it’s Mediterranean-esq I’ll go basmati or jasmine. From there you can either cook your rice straight up, or saute some garlic, onions, and or mushrooms to cook up with the rice to give it a extra little flavor kick.
The next category of ingredients is going to be your protein and cooked vegetables. Here is where you can really incorporate a lot of different flavors with how you prepare whatever vegetables you have, and what protein you use. I almost always use tofu, but again, this is whatever you have lying around. Sometimes I have nothing but a can of chickpeas and so I roast those up to my protein component. Now you can make this as complicated as you want, but I’m not about that life. I put whatever the fuck I have on the same foil rimmed baking sheet with some oil and seasonings and pop it in the oven until it’s all roasted up.
Once you have your base, and your cooked vegetables and protein, it is time for the fun part: assembly! This is where you can really get crazy with flavors, textures, and different nutritional components. If I am making an Asian-ish sort of bowl and I have some frozen edamame, I’ll boil that up and include that. If we are talking a ¡Picante! Bowl and I have a can of black beans, I’ll give those a rinse and throw them on. This is also the layer that you want to consider any sauces. Think your srirachas, your tahinis, if you are an actual garbage person, maybe this is where you use ketchup. However, I would strongly advise against that because ketchup is fucking gross in almost all applications, but if it’s all you’ve got, it’s all you’ve got. Also an avocado is almost always a good idea. With any flavor, at any time. Last but certainly not least, you have your garnishes. This could be whatever herbs you have lying around, perhaps a splash of lime or a drizzle of pomegranate molasses. The trick with finding the right one is just staying within your theme lane.
Now as you build, and this is crucial, you make that shit pretty. If I am making a garbage bowl, that I intend to sit and eat in front of the TV, you better believe it looks like it just stumbled out of a shiny corner of instagram, with perfectly balanced and separated ingredients and just the right amount of garnish. Because even though you are kind of a lazy garbage person, and even though you may or may not have used ketchup, you still made something delicious, and nourishing and balanced with only the random assortment of shit you had in your kitchen, and that’s pretty alright.
