I’ve been obsessed with poke (pronnounced poh-KAY) bowls as of late. (Along with every millennial.) If you’ve never had one, it’s a customizable bowl of rice and veggies, along with raw fish and a sauce. It’s crazy delicious.
Obviously this version isn’t raw, but it does have all of the other poke flavors and accoutrements. The salmon has a teriyaki-inspired marinade, that goes along well with the light fresh spring vegetables and greens in this bowl. I mean, who can resist a watermelon radish? Drizzle with a healthy amount of spicy mayo and you’ve got the best dinner of spring!
This bowl might seem adventurous and complicated, but it’s truly just rice, salmon, and a salad all in one bowl together. It’s the full meal deal. Get ready for your new weeknight dinner obsession. xo.
More recipes like this: Poke Nachos + Sweet Thai Chili Shrimp Lettuce Wraps + Barbecue Baked Salmon with Superfood Slaw + Whole30 Approved Salmon and Potato Curry
Spring Baked Salmon Poke Bowl
Ingredients
Poke Bowl
- 2 salmon filets
- 2-3 cups spring lettuce mix
- 1 cup sugar snap peas
- 1 watermelon radish, sliced into thin rounds (sub regular radish)
- 1/2 avocado, sliced thin
- 1/4 cup pickled ginger
- 2 tablespoons green onion, diced
- 2 tablespoons almond slices, toasted
- 1/2 cup sunflower sprouts (sub any kind of sprouts)
Brown Rice
- 1 cup uncooked brown rice
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 2 cups water
Salmon Marinade
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1/2 lime, juiced
Spicy Mayo
- 1/3 cup vegan mayo (sub regular mayo)
- 1 tablespoon Sriracha
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1/2 lime, juiced
Instructions
Cook the brown rice:
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Heat a large pot over medium heat on the stove. Add in your dry brown rice and toasted sesame oil. Toss for 2-3 minutes, until the rice smells nutty and aromatic. Add in water and salt and increase heat to high until boiling. Once boiling, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes.
Bake the salmon:
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Meanwhile, mix together your salmon marinade ingredients in a bowl until well combined. Place salmon on a small baking sheet our tray and pour marinade on top. Let marinate for 10-15 minutes.
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Preheat oven to 375.
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Once salmon has marinated for 15-20 minutes, bake for 15-20 minutes (depending how thick your salmon is.)
Make the spicy mayo:
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In a small bowl, whisk together spicy mayo ingredients until smooth and well combined. Set aside.
Assemble the bowl:
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While salmon is baking, chop and slice your watermelon radish, green onion, and avocado. Divide evenly between two bowls along with spring lettuce, sugar snap peas, pickled ginger, almonds, and sprouts.
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When rice and salmon are done cooking, divide them evenly into your two bowls. Top each bowl with a drizzle of spicy mayo.
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EAT UP.
“Are you eating dessert or are you being good?”
“Does anyone wanna be bad and split the french toast with me?”
“I’m going to indulge and order the fries.”
Our language around food is coded with the words. Good. Bad. Indulge. Guilt.
We shouldn’t have to “fail” at food. We are humans who need nutrients to survive.
But it is these words that has kept the billion dollar diet industry running. It’s a fear tactic. If some food is “bad” and others are “good” then you can make mistakes, and that leaves room for someone else to have the solution. The next diet. The next meal plan. The next health food craze. It’s all fueled by fear.
We’re all afraid to some extent that the life we’re living isn’t good enough – isn’t “pure” enough, isn’t “clean” enough. We’re afraid of fat. We’re afraid of our bodies. We’re afraid to do the hard work it takes to love ourselves.
So we numb. And we search out the next fix.
Being healthy-ish isn’t sexy. It isn’t fear-based. It doesn’t offer an easy solution. Being healthyish requires letting go of the good and bad labels and replacing them with a deep understanding of your body and how to intuit what it wants.
It’s not a revolution that is going to craze the nation. It’s a life long journey full of hard work. That’s why you have to *celebrate* all of the healthier successes. Because this journey isn’t easy. But wow -it’s worth it.
The journey has to start with some radical reconfiguring of the way we think and talk about food. Our words are incredibly important when it comes to our outlook. So start to eliminate any qualifiers you use to describe your food. Anything beyond “delicious,” “juicy,” “creamy” (etc.) can get scratched from your vocab. Stop talking about how much or how little you’ve eaten.
Eat when you are hungry. Stop when you are full. (This is actually extremely hard do to, but until you master it just stop giving power to complaining about “how much you ate.”)
Stop verbally demonizing food, and eventually it will be easier for you to unlink that mental association.
No food is inherently good or bad. We label it as such. Food can be less nourishing for you, and you can want to eat things with a specific kind of nourishment quality, but that doesn’t make all other food bad. It never did anything wrong.
We have to change our food narrative. We have these incredible disparities between food, our bodies, and the discussion of mental health. They are all linked. You can not be fully healthy by just eating “the right food.” Health is deeper than that. It’s more complicated than – yes – the Spring Baked Salmon Poke Bowl is healthy. And – no- gummy worms are not healthy.
True health requires an extreme perspective shift. True health requires giving up our fear based health choices in exchange for a deep understanding of our bodies. True health requires hard work.
True health is radical. xo.
