Banh Mi Bowls with Lemongrass Meatballs

Lemongrass Meatball Bowls? That’s right: quinoa or rice topped with quick pickled carrots, herbs, peanuts, and easy lemongrass pork meatballs all covered with spicy mayo. <– this is a thing.

This recipe is sponsored by Wholesome!®.

Guys. I am so digging the bowl lifestyle!

You probably had no idea though because I hardly ever post bowls. (I always post bowls.)

Today’s meatball bowl is inspired by a banh mi (traditional sandwich style), which I’ve only ever eaten once, which makes me a banh mi loser. I acknowledge this fully.

But I loved it so much that I needed it even more. Gimme the stuff that has tons of flavor – the meatballs, the pickled vegetable salad, the herbs, the spicy mayo, the pate – except no pate on this homemade bowl version, srsly WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? – all of these ingredients are mostly what I’m wanting to eat when I think about a banh mi.

Watch How To Make Our Lemongrass Meatball Bowls:

Bowls in general are all about layers. So let’s start with the base layer to this bowl: you can choose to build your bowl on rice, quinoa, rice noodles, or I guess just lettuce if you want it to taste like heartbreak (but don’t do that). Some kind of basic carb situation would be my suggestion. I chose black/red quinoa – mostly because it’s all I happened to have on hand at the moment.

Exhibit A with the red quinoa stand-in: bowls are extremely versatile.

Next layer: on top of the quinoa base, we’re going for a pickled vegetable salad which sounds totally intimidating and really just means shredded or julienne cut vegetables soaked in rice vinegar and sugar for about an hour. That will do it, friends.

I should mention that we are using coconut palm sugar in this recipe which is a big time bonus because it’s a delicious, unrefined brown sugar that doesn’t taste like coconut (that might get weird) – instead it has a deep caramel-lush-ous flavor that is just begging to be featured in Asian sauces of all sorts.

Also lovable: this sugar is actually made by the cooperative farmers in Indonesia who tap the nectar of the coconut palm trees, kind of like you might imagine a northwoodsian tapping a maple tree for syrup. The nectar gets heated over fire until it reduces down to granulated sugar, because OBVIOUSLY. It just had to be that cool.

Guys. I love Wholesome! I loved them before they were trendy and now – bonus – they’re trendy! so you can buy their organic, fair trade products at non-exotic locations, like, for example, Regular Person Target. THANK YOU LIFE.

Next layer: over the quinoa and pickled salad, let’s throw a handful of crushed peanuts and every possible herb that you could ever have in your fridge ever. I went crazytown with green onions, cilantro, basil, and mint. I did not regret it.

Next layer: now we come to the crown jewel of this recipe, the thing that carries most of the flavor: THE MEATBALLS.

Can I just tell you this? My sister, who used to be a vegetarian, is working with us this summer. On the day I made these, she sampled one out of the fridge after I left and she specifically sent me a text to tell me how good they were. Former vegetarian, guys. Loving the meatballs. These are really really good meatballs. They are little crispy gems of pork, lemongrass (I just buy that paste in a tube from the produce section – my life has no time for locating and deconstructing fresh lemongrass sorry not sorry), sugar, and fish sauce which sounds totally scary but it’s so utterly life-changingly delicious. Please try.

Final layer: spicy mayo // mic drop.

I am totes making this for dinner club this month. Bring on the lemongrass meatball bowl party.

Source notes: This recipe was previously titled “Banh Mi Bowls” but was updated in August 2021 to better reflect and respect the cultural origins from which this dish came from. The name Banh Mi directly translates to “bread.” A Banh Mi is a short baguette with thin, crisp crust, filled with all sorts of delicious things like meat, pickled vegetables, herbs, and mayonnaise. In a word: it is GOOD.

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Nutrition information is for 1 out of 4 bowls (meatballs, veggies, and rice using a total of 1 cup uncooked rice) and does not include spicy mayo sauce.

Thanks to Wholesome!® for partnering with us for this post! And for being a brand that we love and respect. 

And thanks to you, readers, for supporting the brands that do food right.

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This recipe is part of our collection of best healthy bowls. Check it out!

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