Riced Cauliflower Bowl…The Homemade Vs. The Microwave Version

Just in reading the title of this entry, you can probably make an educated guess on where this is going.

I was doing my usual Trader Joe’s grocery shopping the other day, as I tend to do 2-3 times a week. (This actually happens!) I began perusing the frozen section, because I often buy items like frozen fruits and frozen cauliflower rice for smoothies and quick meal additions. Next to the frozen cauliflower rice was a new frozen item, a microwavable cauliflower rice bowl. It looked pretty tasty in the picture, containing cauliflower rice, roasted onions, sweet potatoes, marinated chickpeas, all in a tahini sauce.

Looks good, right?

I was excited to try this riced cauliflower bowl. However, it wasn’t quite as exciting when I got home and actually opened the package.

Is it me, or does that not look like a bowl of sadness?

Where is the pretty parsley on top, the big chunks of sweet potato, the firm baked tofu?

Maybe it’s just me, because I do cook a lot…I know what fresh looks like and tastes like, and this just did not look appetizing, plus it was tiny (comparison picture later) and this is supposed to be a meal! I looked again at the ingredients and thought, you know what, I could make a better version of this. The ingredients are pretty simple, even the spices weren’t complicated. So I put the bowl back in its box and back in the freezer.

The next day, I went back to the grocery store and picked out the few ingredients I didn’t have at home already, fresh cauliflower rice ( I have frozen, but wanted to use fresh for this), a yellow onion, fresh lemon for the tahini sauce and fresh parsley, then I went to work making my own homemade cauliflower rice bowl.

The chickpeas in the Trader Joe’s microwavable bowl were marinated in olive oil, chili powder, garlic powder, paprika and salt. So I did the same with mine. I used about half a container. This is probably twice the amount that was used in the microwavable bowl.

I cut up a quarter of a large yellow onion and a half of a large sweet potato, and along with the marinated chickpeas, placed them all in a baking pan in the oven on 450F for about 20 minutes. While those ingredients were roasting, I took the whole bag of fresh cauliflower rice and cooked it for a few minutes in a cast iron skillet with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper.

Typically olive oil isn’t the best thing to cook with, because it is best cooked at low heat temperatures. so if you make this and are concerned about that, you could use avocado or grapeseed oil as well.

Next, I cooked some tofu. Now, I will be the first to admit, I don’t consume tofu regularly (in fact, barely!) so cooking it is probably not my strong suit. So I found a firm baked tofu at Trader Joe’s that was already cooked and I could just lightly saute in the skillet to warm it up a bit. Of course, this dish would be 100 percent homemade if I made the tofu seasonings from scratch, but for time’s sake I did not, and it’s close enough.

Next, I added the cooked tofu to the pan of cooked sweet potato, onion and chickpeas.

Almost forgot, while all of this was happening, the tahini sauce was pretty basic, so I took a tablespoon of tahini, a tablespoon of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, salt and a bit of water to thin it out, and the dressing for the bowl was created.

Once the cauliflower was cooked. I placed it in a bowl and added the cooked toppings, then the tahini sauce and of course the parsley! It looks amazing, and it is SO MUCH MORE FOOD.

Let’s have a look at the microwave version and homemade version side by side.

So what was my point of doing this comparison? I want people to see how much of a difference it makes to DO IT YOURSELF. We can all make a million excuses of why we don’t have time. So maybe you can’t make something like this fresh every day, but what if you made enough of this for two or three servings, put it in Tupperware and had it the next day, or split it in two meals? I actually ate half of the homemade one and had the other half the next day with a piece of chicken.

I did end up eating the microwave version. It was about 7 bites worth of food. Not bad for a very small meal, but not really enough protein to be a sufficient full meal. It bothers me that someone who thinks they are eating healthy buying this item would probably still be hungry after.

You see the caloric breakdown for the microwavable bowl above. The homemade bowl is a least twice the amount of calories. At least twice the protein, fat and carbohydrates. the quality of the nutrients is much superior, and there are no binders, (which won’t kill you, but if you don’t need them, its one less thing in your food). The difficulty to prepare this dish is minimal, and it’s pretty to look at.