I've found that eating a bit healthier doesn't need to involve a major overhaul to everything, all at once. In fact, it's much easier to make small changes overtime. I think this logic is great for eating more plant-based meals. Start small and start easy. This spicy peanut sauce noodle bowl is one of my favorite places to start people. It's quick, can use a myriad of vegetables, and is a good sample of items I stock in my pantry.
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An easy recipe to have in your back pocket for a quick dinner. This spicy peanut sauce pairs perfectly with noodles, grains, and vegetables.
Tips & Tricks: This recipe is very forgiving. Use what you have on hand whether that means swapping out ingredients in the sauce, noodles, or vegetables.
Stock up: get the pantry ingredients you will need: rice noodles, peanut butter, soy sauce
Nutrition: see the information.
This peanut sauce bowl is the perfect example of an equation meal. The actual recipe isn't that important. It's more about the components you can switch depending on the items you might have on hand. Change out the noodles, the sauce base, and vegetables- it will still turn out well. A few of my favorite combinations include roasted broccoli with tahini sauce over quinoa or grilled zucchini with almond butter sauce over soba noodles.
Noodles: I like the rice noodles because it makes this recipe gluten-free. However, I’ve made this with udon, soba, and ramen before- it’s hard to go wrong with such an easy sauce. Don't want to use noodles? Brown rice or quinoa would work as well.
Sauce: Tahini, sunflower butter, or almond butter make a nice alternative to peanut butter.
Vegetables: I like to go by seasons when choosing vegetables for this bowl. During the fall and winter, a mix of kale, chard, and spinach is nice along with broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. During the spring, asparagus is the star followed by snap and snow peas. For summer, it’s all about the summer squash!
I know peanut butter gets a bad rap because there are "better" nut/seed butters on the market. But we still always have it on hand. It's an easy reach for a snack or a something like this peanut sauce. I like to buy no salt, no palm oil peanut butter. You can also make your own- it just requires a good food processor!
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I always choose peanut butter, even if it gets a bad rap, because I just love it so much more than "healthier" nut/seed butters. And I particularly love peanut sauce. What a great building block recipe.
Peanut sauce is the BEST!!! It makes even the most simple dish so filling. I love that about it! I agree with Stacy from Pop Kitchen. Gotta stick with PB. I have subbed almond butter in these types of sauces before and the milder flavor really didn't pop quite like the PB. Its an oldie but a goodie;)
Is this an updated version? I feel like I had bookmarked it and the sauce measurements are different as it does not have the same consistency nor taste. I have tried adjusting after the fact but just isn't the same. Please help, thanks!
Hi Heather! It is a slightly updated version! You can find the old version here:https://web.archive.org/web/20160215182715/https://naturallyella.com/spicy-peanut-sauce-with-brown-rice-noodles-and-veggies
Fabulous recipes ,thank you very much
I loved this recipe! I doubled the recipe because I'm feeding 4 with the hopes of leftovers 🙂 It's fairly quick and you're right; it's super forgiving no matter the modifications. My family loved it! I used spaghetti noodles instead of rice because that's what I had, broccoli, & spinach! I think due to the noodles being so dense I needed more sauce than s small pour on top. Other than that simply EXCELLENT! This is definitely a staple in my vegan repertoire. thank you!