Ingredients
1/2 butternut squash, peeled, diced
1 yellow onion, peeled, diced
1 green or red pepper, washed, diced
1 cup green peas, cooked
1 cup kale, washed, finely chopped, packed tight
Mushrooms of your choice, chopped (Portabella or white button mushrooms work great. Use as many as you like, they shrink.)
1 and 1/2 cups brown rice
3 cups low sodium (or homemade) veggie broth
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
Onion powder to taste
Celery seed to taste
Pepper to taste
Red pepper flakes to taste (hubs thought it should be hotter.)
*DO NOT ADD SALT AT THIS POINT.
Method
1. Cook the Rice
Measure 1 & 1/2 cups brown rice into a very fine mesh colander and rinse until the water runs clear.
Put 3 cups of low sodium veggie broth into a saucepan. DO NOT SALT. Add the rinsed rice. Cover. Put the heat on medium high until it begins to boil gently, and then reduce the heat. Let it simmer while you do the rest, but keep an eye on it so you a stop the cooking just when the rice is at the perfect texture.
I like to stop it before the liquid is all gone, so the rice is still firm and doesn’t stick together. So I open the pot and give it a stir and a taste now and then until the bite feels just right.
2. Sauté the Veggies
Heat a nice big, non-stick frying pan until you can drip water onto it and the water will bead up and dance. Then dump in your washed and chopped veggies except for the peas. The pan should sizzle when the veggies land in it. Stir and keep the heat high, as the onions and peppers begin to cook. The brown stuff sticking on the bottom is plant sugars. Cooking them like this adds way more flavor, so let that happen, but don’t let them burn or stick too firmly. Keep stirring with a utensil that won’t scratch until the onions begin to get translucent, and the other veggies begin to soften a little bit and then add a splash of veggie broth to deglaze and incorporate the yummy sugars. Add the seasonings at this point. Add broth as needed to keep the veggies from burning, but only just enough to do so. Scrape and stir, and let the veggies cook.
3. Add the Rest
When the squash is fork tender in your frying pan and all the veggies seem close to done, add the cooked rice and peas. Heat and stir until all the flavors have time to mingle (another 5 minutes or so.)
Scatter a small amount of salt over the surface at the end.
Serve.
Notes
I generally make meals based on whatever I have in on hand, so feel free to tweak the ingredients. Carrots, snap peas, broccoli—the options are endless and each will tweak the flavor slightly. Further, you can grab a package of frozen chopped peppers and onions and frozen butternut squash to speed this process up. Just remember that the moisture content will be much higher. The frozen veggies will cook through faster, but take a bit longer to release their water content, so you can sometimes end up with a mushy consistency if not cooking with care.
Enjoy!
This is a whole foods plant-based (WFPB) meal. Eating WFPB consistently has reverse type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and colorectal cancer, and those are just the ones with peer reviewed medical studies that prove them.
Anecdotal evidence shows it does far more; lowers blood pressure and cholesterol and is incredibly effective against autoimmune disorders.
A whole foods plant-based diet does not include meat, eggs, dairy products, processed foods, or oils. To learn more, watch the documentary FORKS OVER KNIVES on Amazon Prime or any of the multiple excellent documentaries listed here on our site.