Everyday food | The ingenious bowl trend is here to stay – An easy five-ingredient everyday meal solves many problems

Bowls conquered the menus of trendy cafes a few years ago, and soon many people were making bowls at home as well.

The trend came to stay in home kitchens. That’s good, because few other foods solve as many everyday food challenges at the same time: How to add vegetables in a versatile way? How to combine ingredients? How to get variability? How to avoid food waste? How to use leftovers? How to make it easy, light and nutritious? How to always come up with something new? How to feed a picky child or spouse?

Formula bowl is easy.

1. Start from the bottom: pile a scoop of rice, whole grains, bulgur, potatoes or noodles in a bowl.

2. Top with as many vegetables as possible, some raw and some cooked. Fresh sprouts, spinach, kale, carrot, crisp lettuce, red or white cabbage, avocado, apple and spring onion. Roasted or fried, for example, mushrooms, zucchini, beetroot, sweet potato, cauliflower and broccoli.

3. Some acidic side dish freshens the whole thing. Pickle cucumber, carrot, radish, fennel with the 1-2-3 broth or put a spoonful of sushi ginger on top.

4. Add a filling protein source, such as meat, fish, or plant protein, such as crispy fried tofu.

5. The sauce binds the dish together. You can easily get a lot of flavor with ethnic seasoning sauces. Teriyaki and miso-mirin sauce can be used both as a marinade and as a sauce. The rich Tahini brings creaminess to the lemon vinaigrette.

Along with the tofu and sauce, you can put steamed oats, roasted early cabbage, avocado, sprouts and shiitake mushrooms in the bowl. Picture: Tuomas Kolehmainen

Salmon can be served with jasmine rice, boiled edamame beans, apple-kale slaw, cucumbers and carrots. Picture: Tuomas Kolehmainen

With chicken and miso-mirin sauce, steamed broccoli, roasted cauliflower and potato, and spinach and egg go well with the bowl. Picture: Tuomas Kolehmainen

Picture: Tuomas Kolehmainen

Kia Arpia and Petra Wettenranta are the founders of the food community Bella Table. The food-loving bellas are familiar to many from Instagram (@bella.table) and the weekly podcast, which includes food experiences that indulge the taste buds as well as enthusiastic, curious and in-depth talk about food. In this story series, Arpia and Wettenranta tackle the technique of food preparation, but in a relaxed way: favorite recipes are broken down into parts so that success is guaranteed.