The Nourishing Bowl We Make When the Week Gets Loud
Grilled Chicken, Roasted Sweet Potato & Quinoa Bowls with Lemon Tahini
September has a particular energy to it in Boulder. The mornings have that first bite of cold in them, the aspens start thinking about turning, and everyone's calendar has quietly filled up while they weren't looking. School is in full swing. Practices and pickups and permission slips are in full swing. Somewhere around Wednesday, dinner becomes a problem to be solved rather than something anyone is looking forward to.
This is the bowl for that week.
It is the meal we come back to every fall: warm, deeply savory, genuinely filling, and built around good protein and a pile of roasted vegetables. Everything roasts on one sheet pan. The dressing takes four minutes. And the whole thing doubles or triples beautifully, which is the real secret. Cook once on a Sunday afternoon and you have dinner handled for days.
Nobody has ever been sad to open the fridge and find this waiting.
Grilled Chicken, Sweet Potato & Quinoa Bowls
Serves 2–3 adults, or 2 adults and 2 small kiddos
Ingredients
For the bowls
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 bunch kale, loosely chopped
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
¾ cup quinoa
Olive oil, salt, and pepper
Garlic (fresh or powder), oregano, and basil (fresh or dried)
Evol.v Living Kraut, for serving
For the lemon tahini dressing
¼ cup tahini
Juice of 1 lemon, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1–2 tablespoons water
Garlic (fresh or powder), to taste
Fresh or dried parsley, to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
The chicken
Rub the chicken breasts with olive oil, then season with salt, pepper, chopped garlic or garlic powder, oregano, and basil.
On the grill: medium heat, about 9 minutes per side.
In the oven: 425°F for about 18–25 minutes.
Either way, use a meat thermometer and cook until the thickest part of the breast reaches 165°F. Time is a guideline. Temperature is the thing that actually matters. Let the chicken rest for 5 minutes before slicing it into thin strips, which keeps it juicy.
The quinoa
Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a pot or rice cooker. Add the quinoa and cook until the grains are tender and the little tails have uncurled. If you are using a pot, keep an eye on it near the end so the bottom doesn't catch.
The vegetables (one sheet pan, three stages)
This is the part that makes the whole thing work. Each vegetable gets exactly the roasting time it wants.
Toss the sweet potato cubes with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread on a baking sheet and roast at 425°F for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, toss the sliced mushrooms with olive oil, salt, and pepper in one bowl, and the chopped kale with olive oil, salt, and pepper in another.
Pull the sheet pan out, add the mushrooms, gently mix them in with the sweet potatoes, and return to the oven for 12 minutes.
Pull it out again, add the kale, mix gently, and roast for a final 5–8 minutes depending on how crispy you like your kale edges.
The dressing
In a bowl, combine the tahini, garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil, parsley, and water. Whisk until smooth. You are looking for something on the thicker side but still easily pourable. Add water a splash at a time until it gets there.
Build the bowls
A generous spoonful of quinoa in the bottom. A generous pile of the roasted vegetables on top. Several strips of chicken. A good drizzle of the lemon tahini. And then, right at the end, a scoop of Evol.v Living Kraut on the side.
A word about that kraut
We are biased, obviously. But the kraut earns its place in this bowl.
Everything else here is warm, soft, rich, and rounded. The kraut is cold, crunchy, sour, and alive. It cuts straight through the tahini and wakes the entire bowl up. It is the difference between a good dinner and a dinner your family asks for again.
It is also fermented, which means it brings living cultures to the table. Your gut and your brain are in constant conversation by way of the vagus nerve, one of the main highways of your nervous system, and that conversation runs in both directions. What you feed your gut is part of how you feel. Not the whole story, but not nothing either.
Ask our front desk about our sauerkraut. If you are lucky enought to snag some, the proceeds go to The EvolVlovE Project, our non-profit whose mission is to provide high quality chiropractic care to all people, regardless of financial status.
Cook once, eat three times
If you have a busy household, and we are going to assume you do, double or triple this recipe. It is barely more work. Roast two sheet pans instead of one, grill four chicken breasts instead of two, make extra quinoa.
Store the components separately and keep the dressing in its own jar. Assemble fresh in about ninety seconds when you need it. The vegetables reheat well. The chicken is excellent cold, sliced over greens the next day.
A busy season asks a lot of your body's ability to adapt. Feeding yourself well on a Tuesday night is one of the more loving things you can do about that.
Make it. Double it. Tell us what you added.
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