Hello friends,

It’s about time I spotlight the LINCHPIN meal of my intuitive cooking lifestyle: the sauté bowl. I’ve mentioned this daily creation of mine often, and I'll likely be writing about it forevermore because the versions are constantly evolving! Sauté bowls are essential to my easy-breezy, use-what-you-have, creative way of cooking, not to mention they're FAST, flexible, and totally delicious.

My sauté bowls this week turned out especially beautiful and tasty, so I’m excited to tell you about the latest iteration, but first, let’s go over the basics / get you the GUIDE to making this meal a regular part of your life...

Sautéing is an essential cooking technique defined as: "a method of cooking that uses a relatively small amount of oil or fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat" (from wikipedia, more here).

A sauté bowl is my full-meal application of this technique that most often includes a heaping pile of veggies, greens on top, a protein on the side, and some *toppings* for contrasting texture (the toppings are KEY to making this meal special, and unique every time!). A sauté bowl is best for ~1-3 people, just because you need a lot of pan space/surface area to properly sauté all this veg!

GPJ Intuitive Guide to Sauté Bowls:

Key tasks:

• Manage cooking times of different foods (which cook at different speeds) so they finish cooking around the same time
• Use a combination of browning (lid off) and steaming (lid on) to get caramelization and browning on the outside AND ensure food is cooked through on the inside
• Add longer-cooking-time veggies to the pan first, quicker-cooking veggies later; greens at the end
• If desired, towards the end of cooking, you can add a dash of water, then quickly put the lid on to steam the greens/finish cooking everything
• If sautéing both proteins and veggies, I find it's generally best to do them in separate pans to better manage cooking times and speeds

Factors to consider:

• surface area: if the pan is crowded with veggies, and/or if you stir it around too much, there won’t be as much browning/crispiness; make sure you use large enough pans or multiple pans so veggies can spread out
• number of pans: especially if you’re cooking for more than one person, I recommend cooking proteins and veggies in separate pans so you can manage the different speeds at which they cook. If cooking for larger groups, make sure to use big enough pans to hold all the food. I recommend using a 12-inch cast iron pan for 1-2 people, plus a smaller pan for protein as needed (this is what I do daily).
• cooking fat: since this is medium-/high heat cooking, a fat with a high smoke point is best. For more variety in flavor, consider using a mix of fats and/or adding a small amount of a more flavorful fat that goes with the flavors you’re working with; for example - a dash of sesame oil is great with East Asian inspired dishes, etc. If you combine a higher heat fat (like avocado oil) with a more heat-sensitive fat (like butter), that can help prevent the fat from burning or smoking too much. PS. Butter can burn more quickly so keep an eye on it, but make sure to try mushrooms sautéed in butter - one of my favorite foods!

Now that you've got the overview, let's talk about this week's iteration, version 1 pictured at the top of the email and version 2 pictured right above.

I normally rotate through different combos of my usual sauté bowl candidate veggies (as listed above), but this week I had some winter squash and sweet potatoes that needed to get used up, AND I was feeling extra hungry in the morning.

For version 1 I decided to try chopping the squash extremely thin - like a potato chip - and sauté it up for a while first before adding any other veg. I used a good amount of oil and it got nicely browned on one side, so I flipped it, then added some extra romanesco cauliflower (still working through my huge head from last week!), followed by some pre-cooked chickpeas, a few pre-cooked meatballs (defrosted from my freezer that needed to get eaten), and finally kale. I then threw in a bit of water in, plopped on the lid, and steamed it all for another couple minutes until the kale was bright green. After plating it, I topped with a soy-ginger-tahini sauce I had made, and some walnuts. (see top photo) OMG IT WAS SO GOOD!

The winter squash was less cooked than it would have been if I roasted it, but I kind of liked the variety! And even though I steamed it at the end, it still had great browned flavor from the initial crisping. It was so good that the next day I decided to do the same thing with the sweet potatoes! I cut them into very thin coins and cooked them in the oil on their own for a good 5-7 mins, flipping before adding more cauliflower and a big pile of kale at the end. This time I ate it with a side of Keema Matar (Pakistani/Indian-style ground beef and peas) I had made the night before. That dish had so much flavor that it complemented the plain sweet potatoes / cauliflower / kale really well. YUMMMMM.

I always have more to say about sauté bowls, but I'll stop here for now. I hope you make some with whatever you have on hand! For more inspiration, see a video of me making a different iteration here.

Happy sautéing!

Love,
Jess