This delicious, Chicken Brown Rice Bowl is an easy one-bowl meal with chicken breast, arugula, avocado, tomatoes, Gruyere with a sriracha yogurt sauce.
Chicken Brown Rice Bowl (Zinque’s Le Bowl)
This recipe is inspired by the LA restaurant, Zinque, an easy chicken and rice bowl is perfect for lunch or dinner. It’s also a great way to use up leftover chicken (or you can use turkey!). I always keep frozen brown rice on hand to whip up these quick, easy bowls in under 10 minutes. You can check out more Healthy Bowl Recipes here!
Hello, I’m Heather K. Jones! I’m a dietitian, and the nutrition expert for the Skinnytaste cookbooks.
I work with women who struggle with emotional eating, overeating or food or body image issues of any sort, and I have a ton of FREE resources, articles and videos to help you Love Yourself Healthy RIGHT HERE, including this powerful 30-day Master the Weight Loss Mindset Challenge.
Also, during this challenging time I’m offering FREE emotional eating support and guidance twice a month (the first and third Wednesday of each month) inside my Feel Better Eat Better Facebook group right here. So, if you could use some extra love and support, please join me!
When my sister Lori sent me this copycat recipe from a restaurant in LA, I wasn’t sure about the Sriracha and Gruyere combo. But Lori is a fantastic cook (she even won a cooking contest in Vegas a few years ago!), and she assured me that I would love this bowl—and she was right!
Simple ingredients (chicken, tomatoes, arugula, brown rice, gruyere, Sriracha and yogurt) come together for a surprisingly tasty AND super easy one-bowl meal. But don’t forget this secret ingredient…
I believe that LOVE is the secret superpower in all recipes – food made with love has a different energy and taste. You can definitely feel all of the LOVE that Gina puts into creating all of her Skinnytaste recipes, right!?
I also choose to cook with foods treated with love, including locally grown organic produce and animals that have been humanely raised. I buy a lot from a farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley called PolyFace, who believe “plants and animals should be provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness.”
And it’s not just what you eat, but also the state you are in when you eat. Because if you’re feeling angry, guilty, worried or sad when you eat, your body metabolizes food in a very different way.
If you eat while your body is in a stressed-out “fight or flight” mode (called the sympathetic state), your digestive system does not have the ability to process its food appropriately, which can lead to (among lots of other things) weight gain.
The quickest way to get your body into a relaxed parasympathetic state (the “rest and restore” mode) that naturally activates your digestive process is through deep breathing. So, before you eat anything, sit down and simply take a few deep breaths—slowly breath in through your nose, and then push the air out through your mouth.
Taking a few breaths before you eat also puts you in touch with your body’s wisdom. I love this from the awesome mindfulness book, How to Eat by Thich Nhat Hanh: “When we take a moment to sit and breathe before we eat, we can get in touch with the real hunger in our body. We can discover if we’re eating because we’re hungry or if we’re eating because it’s time to eat and the food is there. If we’re paying attention and taking our time, we also know how much to eat.”
Chicken Brown Rice Bowl (Zinque's Le Bowl)
Ingredients
For dressing:
- 2 tablespoons plain whole milk Greek yogurt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons sriracha sauce, ore more to taste
- 1 teaspoon water, to thin
For bowl:
- 1 ½ cups baby arugula
- ½ cup cooked brown rice
- 4 ounces cooked skinless chicken breast
- 1 ounce avocado, cubed
- 6 grape tomatoes, halved
- ½ ounce shaved gruyere cheese
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- In a small bowl, combine yogurt, sriracha and water.
- Place arugula in a shallow serving bowl. Layer with rice, chicken, avocado, tomatoes and cheese.
- Top with a pinch of salt and fresh pepper then drizzle with prepared dressing.
