Vegan Chipotle Chick’n Tex-Mex Bowl (Oil Free!)

Mexican is by far my favorite style of food without contest. Mexican food is so versatile that can be loaded with so flavor that your tastebuds are overwhelmed in the best way possible. For a new vegan, Mexican style food was an obvious choice to gravitate towards because of all the beans. My initial draw was not only are beans delicious but they are extremely filling. It was not until I was doing research for my blog Top 10 Vegan Protein Sources that I realized just how protein packed beans really are. One standard can of Pinto or Black beans has approximately 20 grams of protein in them! That is about the same as one standard 4 oz hamburger patty or one 4 oz salmon fillet

To kick off this recipe, you will want to start with your spanish rice. To simplify, you can use boxed spanish rice and prepare to package instructions, or from scratch if you have the time!

For the “chicken” portion, I found some really great fillets from the “Quorn” brand. I really like the Quorn brand, but I did realize recently that even though all of their products are meatless, they are not all necessarily vegan – I found some patties and nuggets that had egg in them. The actual vegan products will have a vegan stamp on the package. From their website, it appears that they are transitioning their products to be fully vegan, however I am currently still seeing the non vegan products at my store so just be sure to check before buying! To actually cook your vegan fillets, heat a medium sized pan to medium-high heat, pour out can of chipotle in adobe sauce (and you can totally omit this if you dont like spice. I really don’t think it is that spicy after cooking as long as you remove the peppers/seeds and only cook in the sauce) into pan with a splash or two of water. Add in your vegan chick’n fillets and coat with the sauce on both sides. Bring the heat down a bit to low or just under medium and let the vegan chick’n simmer for about 3-4 minutes on each side to soak up the chipotle sauce flavor. If you are feeling fancy, once the vegan chick’n has cooked through in sauce you can remove excess sauce and sear the chick’n in the pan to give it char marks. After cooked, remove from heat and slice up into bite sized pieces. Set aside.

Now it is veggie time! Chop up all your veggies beforehand so you can throw them all in together in the pan at once.

In a separate large pan, heat to medium-high and pour about 1/8 cup of water in pan. Once pan is hot, add diced onions, sweet potato (dice these up into pretty tiny cubes in order to allow them to cook faster/at the same pace as the rest of your veggies. If you do not do this, you should probably cook the sweet potatoes seperately. If they are too large they wont be done cooking through when all the rest of your veggies are done), red and green bell peppers and saute until the onion and bell peppers are translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Once those veggies are cooked through, you can go ahead and add black beans, corn and green onions. Mix to combine and cook just long enough to heat through, about 2 mintues. You can also garnish at this time with cilantro if desired.

Ok! Cooking done! Now let’s assemble and eat! I like to start with a bed of chopped lettuce in a bowl, add a scoop of spanish rice, a scoop of the vegetable mixture and a scoop of chopped up vegan chick’n. Then I like to garnish with cherry tomatoes and cilantro. I use a cilantro avocado dip that is to die for as my dressing. That recipe is here:

The beauty of this recipe is that it yields quite a few portions so it is an awesome option if you want to plan for leftovers. I also use this exact mix in my vegan spring rolls, and you could even add this into a burrito, quesadilla, whatever you like! Enjoy.