Vegan Poke Bowl Recipe: A Healthy and Delicious Meal for Everyone

We're gonna make some veggie poke bowls. Super popular in Hawaii, and over the last few years, it's become popular in the mainland U.S. also. Traditionally, poke is cubed raw tuna that's been marinated, and it's over rice. It's absolutely delicious. The problem, of course, is that raw fish is really expensive, especially when it's sushi grade, and these can cost up to 20 bucks a bowl. So today we're making a more affordable version with Japanese sweet potatoes standing in for the fish. And guess what, that's exactly where we start, with the sweet potato. Life can be a struggle, but a good meal doesn't have to be. We can make creative, nutritious, and inventive dishes that won't break the bank. We'll eat well and save money, because that's what we do. Welcome to Struggle Meals. And we're gonna start by peeling them. We're gonna try our very best to cut these sweet potatoes into cubes so that it mimics the shape of poke. Let's get these on a sheet tray and start roasting them. Oil, salt, pepper. Into the oven. All right, we're gonna roast these until they're just tender. Let's start making our rice, sushi rice. And it's extra starchy, so it is highly advisable that you rinse a lot of that starch off. All right, coming into our pot with our rice. Adding water. And we're gonna bring this onto full blast heat. We're just gonna let this rice come to a boil. While we wait on the rice and the sweet potatoes, I'm gonna prep the rest of our components. So my rice is boiling. I'm gonna turn the heat down to low, and I'm gonna cover it. And now we set the timer. Now we gotta get some crispy bits. It's one of my favorite part of poke. Usually it's fried shallots. Sometimes it's garlic. Today we're gonna do a combination. So we've got some shallots here. Uh-oh, it's so spicy. My eyeballs are filled with shallots. All right, moving on to the garlic. If I can see it. Oh, heating up the pan. Gonna use a nice neutral oil here. Coming in with the shallots first. Here we go. Garlic burns pretty easily, so we don't wanna cook it as long as the shallots. Crispy shallots and garlic are ready. Let's just throw that down on a plate. I'm gonna hit these with salt right now. I'll let these cool, and I'll set them aside. Let's make our poke sauce. First we're gonna make a spicy and sweet sesame soy sauce. So we come in with our soy sauce. Sesame oil. Pack it through our red pepper flakes. And we're gonna add some sweetness right here. Mix it up. Done. Let's make our sriracha mayo. Got our mayo. Got our sriracha. And we'll mix that. We've got all our components. We've got our sauces. It's time to get those potatoes. Woo-wee! These look great. So everything's ready. Let's put this bowl together. Got some rice going down. Got our potatoes here. We're gonna sprinkle that all around. We've got our sweet and savory sauce going down. We can come in with some edamame now. It's just frozen edamame that I've thawed. Got some radishes. Cucumbers. Those can come in like this. Some scallions going around. Boom. Avocado. Fantasticness. Great. And we've got our crispy fried shallots. We're gonna hit this with sesame seeds now. Just over the whole thing. Finally, our sriracha mayo. Our poke bowl looks fantastic. It's gonna fill us up really nicely. We've got gorgeous colors. We've got fantastic aromas. And it only comes to $2.79 a serving. That's a huge savings over buying this in a restaurant, and it's mainly because we made it at home, but also because we swapped out the most expensive ingredient, the fish, with a sweet potato. Let's dig in. It's a perfectly balanced bowl. Warm, soft flavors down at the bottom, and then up high, you've got just, boom, spicy soy sesame sauce. And then we've got crispy fried shallots and garlic. And of course, in the middle are all the other toppings, which you can swap out as you see fit. This is both filling and exciting to eat at the exact same time while costing very little money.