These are 4 easy healthy meals I eat practically on a weekly basis. They are amazing base recipes that you can adapt to your liking and your needs. Wholesome and nourishing clean-eating meals that the whole family will love.
All four of these recipes are featured in some way or another in my 6-Week Clean Eating Mastery Program.
1-Minute Prep Healthy Breakfast
Overnight oats are by far the easiest breakfast EVER!
You just add the same ratio of old-fashioned rolled oats to milk into a jar, place it in the fridge for 6-ish hours, and that’s basically it.
From there you can get creative and that’s really the beauty of this healthy meal. You can basically eat it every single day without getting bored because the add ons give plenty of variety.
The best natural sweeteners for overnight oats are maple syrup, honey, and coconut sugar. The best toppings are fresh fruit, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, and nut butter.
Today I made mine with sliced pear and blueberries and I sweetened the oats with maple syrup. Yum!
Roasted Veggie Healthy Dinner or Meal Prep
At the very very least once a week we roast a bunch of low-carb vegetables in the oven. Roasting vegetables brings out the sweetness in them and makes them taste incredible!
It’s important to cut the vegetables into about the same size and to combine the ones that have similar roasting times.
All of these vegetables take about 20 minutes at 400F: zucchini, eggplant, asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans, bell pepper, sugar snap peas.
All of these vegetables take 25-30 minutes at 400F: Brussels Sprouts, all squashes, celery, carrots, most root vegetables.
Combine the roasted vegetables with a healthy carbohydrate such as quinoa, farro, or barley or with a high-carb vegetable like sweet potato, or potato. Add a protein such as chicken, any kind of seafood, eggs, beef…. and you have a perfectly balanced and delicious easy healthy meal on the table in under 30 minutes.
Healthy White Rice
White rice has a pretty bad reputation but it’s actually a pretty amazing carbohydrate. It’s incredibly easy to digest and cooks super quickly. It’s whole cousins like brown rice or red rice obviously have more minerals and nutrients in general but also take 3-4 times as long to cook.
I found the perfect solution for this and it’s inspired by Peruvian Green Rice. Add a bunch of vegetables and a bunch of herbs to the rice and make it more nourishing that way. Without it taking any minute longer to cook.
While the rice is cooking I pan-fry some sole fillet or simply make fried eggs and tada: a balanced easy healthy meal of carbs, veggies, protein, and healthy fats.
Now you can OBVIOUSLY make this dish with any other type of rice as well. It doesn’t have to be white. Here you can find out how to cook all rice in the Instant Pot.
Easy or Fancy Grain Bowl
This is the most versatile recipe of the 4 of them. The possibilities are simply endless. To keep it simple choose one of each only:
Lettuce | Grain | Protein |
---|---|---|
arugula | farro | chicken/pork |
butter lettuce | quinoa | eggs |
romaine lettuce | brown rice | fish/seafood |
baby spinach | barley | beef/lamb |
baby kale | couscous | legumes |
spring mix | millet |
or whatever else you can think of in the three categories.
Add some healthy fat in the form of cheese, nuts, or avocado and/or a delicious dressing and you are golden. A 5-star easy healthy meal you can easily adapt.
I had to totally fancy up my grain bowl however of course because I’m Lorena. And I added cherry tomatoes, blueberries, roasted chickpeas, roasted sweet potato, a hard-boiled egg, and an avocado dill dressing.
4 Easy Healthy Meals
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
- 3/4 cup almond milk
- 1 Tbsp maple syrup
- 1/4 cup blueberries
- 1/2 pear, sliced
- 2 cups cauliflower florets
- 2 cups asparagus cut into 1" pieces
- 2 cup bell pepper
- 1/2 red onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 Tbsp avocado oil
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp oregano
- sea salt
- pepper
- 1 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
- 1/2 Tbsp poultry seasoning
- 1.5 cups quinoa
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1.5 cups chicken broth
- 1/2 Tbsp avocado oil
- 1 small yellow onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1.5 cups white basmati rice
- 1/2 cup diced celery
- 1/2 cup diced carrot
- 1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
- 1 lbs sole fillet
- 1 Tbsp butter
- sea salt
- pepper
- 2 cups arugula
- 1 cup butter lettuce
- 2/3 cup cooked farro
- 5 oz sweet potato, cut into wedges
- 1/2 cup cooked chickpeas
- 1/2 Tbsp avocado oil
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp cumin
- 1/4 cup blueberries
- 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes
- 2 Tbsp chopped red onion
- 1 egg
- 1/2 small avocado
- 1 tsp dijon mustard
- 1/2 lime
- 1 Tbsp dill
- sea salt
- pepper
Instructions
- Overnight Oats (makes 1 serving): Add oats, milk, and maple syrup to a sealable jar and place in the refrigerator overnight. Top with pear and blueberries right before eating.
- Roasted Veggie Healthy Dinner (makes 4 servings): Preheat the oven to 400F, add cauliflower florets, cut up asparagus, sliced bell pepper, sliced red onion, and chopped garlic to a large baking sheet, drizzle with avocado oil, and season with sea salt, pepper, paprika, and oregano.Add chicken thighs to a separate baking sheet and season with sea salt and poultry seasoning. Add vegetables and chicken to the oven for 20-25 minutes. In the meantime, cook quinoa.Serve everything combined on plates or divide amongst 4 meal prep containers.
- Healthy White Rice (makes 4 servings): Add a whole bunch of cilantro and chicken broth (and maybe salt depending on the saltiness of the broth) to a blender and blend well. Press sauté on the instant pot and once hot add a drizzle of avocado oil, then fry onions and garlic until translucent. Hit cancel to turn off the Instant Pot and add rice and cilantro broth and stir well. Ensure all rice is submerged in water and add diced celery, carrots, and bell pepper on top without stirring in. Set the Instant Pot to 3 minutes on high pressure and let the pressure release naturally.In the meantime, season sole fillets with sea salt and pepper and then pan-fry in a little butter. Serve fish over rice.
- Grain Bowl (makes 1 serving): Preheat the oven to 400F and add chickpeas and sweet potato wedges to a baking sheet. Drizzle avocado oil over the chickpeas and sweet potato and season the chickpeas with sea salt, pepper, paprika, and cumin and work oil and seasoning in with your hands. Roast for 20-25 minutes turning sweet potato and shaking chickpeas midway.In the mean-time hard boil and egg, and prepare the dressing by adding dijon mustard, avocado, lime juice, sea salt, pepper and, about 2-3 Tbsp of water to a blender and blend until smooth, then add dill.Add arugula, butter lettuce, cooked farro, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, roasted chickpeas, roasted sweet potato wedges, chopped red onion, and hard-boiled egg to a large bowl and drizzle about half of the dressing over everything.
Colleen says
Are the chickpeas that you used in the grain bowl, canned or dried? If dried, do you soak them first?
Lorena Grater says
They have to be cooked chickpeas. Sorry for not specifying. I just changed that in the recipe card. They can be canned or homecooked but they have to be cooked, they can’t be added to the oven dried.
Nick White says
Really love the idea of the “1-Minute Prep Healthy Breakfast”. Looks super good and I believe a healthy breakfast is important for people that eat breakfast most days. Thanks for sharing this and I look forward to trying it out later this week!
VJ says
Just gorgeous recipes.
Congratulations and thank you for sharing.
Susan Dubose says
What a wonderful recipe list! I can not wait to cook it! Thank you for sharing!