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Do you love sushi but don’t want the hassle of making it at home? This vegan sushi bowl is a deconstructed sushi in a bowl, perfect for weeknight meals.
If Alex and I can agree on one thing, it’s sushi. OK, we agree on a lot of things. Most things, really. Except sports and salsa dancing – you take a guess who likes which! We’re both huge sushi fans, which may sound odd for cooks who focus on vegetarian cooking, but we consider ourselves flexitarian. Our diet is flexible enough to eat meat on occasion, though we mostly eat vegetarian at home! So when we want to have sushi flavors on an everyday basis, we turn to this vegan sushi bowl. Keep reading for the recipe!
Related: Best Vegan Dinner Recipes | Best Healthy Dinner Recipes
Your 5 favorite foods…of all time?
As a good flexitarian, raw fish is my biggest delicacy. It is Number 1 on my Top 5 Foods list. Incidentally, we started discussing our list of favorite foods of all time with some friends over sushi the other night. Have you ever pondered your Top 5 Foods? If you’re wondering, here’s what we came up with:
- Sonja: 1. Raw tuna (tartare or sashimi) 2. Black truffle anything (like this risotto) 3. Sushi 4. Dark chocolate 5. Paella
- Alex: 1. Short ribs 2. Ripe tomatoes 3. Raw tuna 4. Coffee 5. Celery hearts
How to make this vegan sushi bowl
In the meantime, here is an ode to sushi – vegan sushi bowls that are home cook friendly. While we’ve had friends make us sushi before, it’s way easier to pile it all into a bowl. While this does take a bit of prep time making the rice and chopping the vegetables, it’s absolutely worth it in the end.
For this vegan sushi bowl, we’ve used brown rice, nori paper (the seaweed paper used to roll sushi), and a bunch of veggies. It’s all tossed with an orange and soy dressing and sprinkled with sesame seeds. It gives the illusion of eating sushi, without being nearly as labor intensive. We loved it as a weeknight meal where we prepped the sushi bowl components beforehand. We also used our Instant Pot method for brown rice: which is quicker than stovetop and hands off!
Looking for healthy bowl meals?
Outside of this vegan sushi bowl, here are some of our favorite healthy bowl meal recipes:
- Veggie Burrito Bowls
- Healthy Rice Bowls with Fried Egg
- Chickpea Couscous Bowls with Tahini Sauce
- Raw Falafel Buddha Bowls
- Greek Sofrito Quinoa Bowl
- Grain Bowls with Roasted Fall Vegetables
- Vegetarian Quinoa Bibimbap Bowls
- Chickpea Fattoush Bowls
- Thai Salad with Peanut Sauce Dressing
- Homemade Dolsot Bibimbap
- Stress Reducing Avocado and Quinoa Bowl
- Broccoli and Turmeric Yellow Rice Bowl
This recipe is…
This vegan sushi bowl recipe is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and plant-based.
Healthy Sushi Bowl
Do you love sushi but don’t want the hassle of making it at home? This vegan sushi bowl is a deconstructed sushi in a bowl, perfect for weeknight meals.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 40 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Japanese inspired
Ingredients
- 2 cups uncooked brown or white rice
- 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
- ¾ cup fresh squeezed orange juice (2 oranges)
- 3 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce or tamari
- 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
- 3 tablespoons sesame oil
- 3 sheets nori paper*
- ½ cup edamame (we used frozen shelled, which is easiest if you can find it)
- 3 carrots
- 2 green onions
- 1 cucumber
- 1 avocado
Instructions
- Make the rice, according to the package instructions or use our Instant Pot method.* Note: If using white rice, this bowl can be made in 30 minutes.
- Over low heat in a dry skillet, toast sesame seeds for several minutes, stirring frequently and watching closely, until lightly browned.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the fresh orange juice, soy sauce, white wine vinegar and sesame oil. Set aside.
- Slice the nori paper into thin shreds (it is a little tough to cut, but do your best to make thin ribbons).
- Prepare the edamame according to the package instructions (if fresh, place shelled edamame in boiling water for a few minutes until bright green).
- Peel and shred the carrots. Thinly slice the green onions. Chop the cucumber into thin strips. Chop the avocado into slices or chunks.
- To serve, place rice in a bowl. Top with carrots, cucumber, avocado, green onions, sesame seeds, and nori shreds. Drizzle with dressing.
Notes
*Nori paper can be found in the international aisle; it is the black seaweed paper used to make sushi rolls.
Hi! Is the sesame oil for the dressing toasted, or not? Thanks!
Just normal for this recipe, but if you added maybe a 1/2 tablespoon of toasted it would be delish.
i’ve made this recipe many times and my only recommendation is to keep the dressing separate and only put it on the portion you’re eating. if you add the dressing to the whole thing, the rice gets so mushy it’s hard to enjoy. kept separately, it’s perfect.
This is just gorgeous. I can’t wait to make a version!
You need share buttons.
Hi! There are share buttons at the bottom of each post :)
Does this recipe really call for an entire package of Nori for two people? Is this a typo? Sounds really good!
It does — but our package was pretty small. Basically just add all of the ingredients to taste! We’ll try to update with number of ounces if we can figure it out…
Ginger — Sorry, I meant to say that only a few sheets from the package are needed for this recipe. Good catch! I’ve updated the recipe accordingly.
I love this! I am way too lazy to roll sushi myself, but this I can handle. :)