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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.

Vegan Sushi Bowl

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
Vegan Sushi Bowl

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!

rice for homemade sushi bowl
Instant Pot rice is quicker and hands off

Looking for healthy bowl meals?

Outside of this vegan sushi bowl, here are some of our favorite healthy bowl meal recipes:

This recipe is…

This vegan sushi bowl recipe is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and plant-based.

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Healthy Sushi Bowl

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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.

  • Author: A Couple Cooks
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 40 minutes
  • Total Time: 45 minutes
  • Yield: 4 1x
  • Category: Main Dish
  • Method: Stovetop
  • Cuisine: Japanese inspired

Ingredients

Scale
  • 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

  1. 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.
  2. Over low heat in a dry skillet, toast sesame seeds for several minutes, stirring frequently and watching closely, until lightly browned.
  3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the fresh orange juice, soy sauce, white wine vinegar and sesame oil. Set aside.
  4. Slice the nori paper into thin shreds (it is a little tough to cut, but do your best to make thin ribbons).
  5. Prepare the edamame according to the package instructions (if fresh, place shelled edamame in boiling water for a few minutes until bright green).
  6. Peel and shred the carrots. Thinly slice the green onions. Chop the cucumber into thin strips. Chop the avocado into slices or chunks.
  7. 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.

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About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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20 Comments

  1. Amanda R. says:

    Hi! Is the sesame oil for the dressing toasted, or not? Thanks!

    1. Alex Overhiser says:

      Just normal for this recipe, but if you added maybe a 1/2 tablespoon of toasted it would be delish.

  2. Cee Bee says:

    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.

  3. Aleksandra says:

    This is just gorgeous. I can’t wait to make a version!

  4. Emily says:

    You need share buttons.

    1. Alex says:

      Hi! There are share buttons at the bottom of each post :)

  5. Ginger says:

    Does this recipe really call for an entire package of Nori for two people? Is this a typo? Sounds really good!

    1. Alex says:

      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…

    2. Sonja says:

      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.

  6. Kiersten @ Oh My Veggies says:

    I love this! I am way too lazy to roll sushi myself, but this I can handle. :)

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