Marinara Baked Vegetables with Garlic-Caper Fried Broccoli Rice is the ultimate healthy and tasty meal! You won’t even realize there aren’t any grains involved!

I love making and eating colorful and bountiful meals like these. It uses simple store bought ingredients, along with easy to find veggies and herbs. It’s all about the flavor combinations. This entire dish is low effort, high reward!

We’re so into riced broccoli these days. I usually grate a couple of heads of broccoli and store them in the fridge to use over the week. But today, I just used a pre-riced bag from the grocery store. They’re just perfect for quick stir fries, and so flavorful.

A perfect baked side dish for the fried ‘rice’ was a sort of ratatouille, or baked vegetables. Another super simple dish to make.

For the rice, garlic and capers fried and tossed in, makes for the most fragrant, briny and savory fried ‘rice’.

Ingredients for the broccoli rice:
16oz bag riced broccoli
3 cloves garlic (use 1 or 2 of you’re not a garlic fiend), finely chopped
3 tbsp capers in brine, chopped
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp red chilli flakes (this is optional, use depending on the level of spice you’d like)
1 tsp coarse salt
2 tbsp olive oil
Ingredients for the marinara baked veggies:
3 cups baby spinach (or regular spinach chopped)
1 cup cherry tomatoes
2 zucchinis, chopped into cubes
2 cups roasted garlic marinara sauce (use any flavor of store bought jar you like)
1 tsp coarse salt
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp dried basil

Method for the marinara baked veggies:.

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Use a cast iron or oven friendly pan.

To the pan, add baby spinach, cherry tomatoes, and chopped zucchini. Sprinkle a tsp of salt. all over. Now pour all the marinara sauce evenly over the veggies.

Sprinkle the chopped garlic, red chilli flakes, and dried basil over the top as well.

Place the pan in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes.

Check at the 20 min mark. You want the tomatoes burst and bubbly; and the zucchini to be tender yet firm. Leave it for extra minutes until you get there.

Remove from heat, and grate @violife_foods parmesan over the top and it’s done!

@violife_foods makes vegan parmesan blocks that’s incredible!

Method for the broccoli rice:
In a separate saute pan, add 2 tbsps olive oil and heat over medium heat. Add chopped garlic, and oregano. Fry for 30 seconds.

Remove capers from the bottle, along with a tsp of brine. Chop them, and add into the pan.

Next, add the riced broccoli, red chilli flakes and salt. Toss everything together and cook over medium heat for 6-8 minutes.

It’s actually done at this point, but I like to crank the heat to high, and toss around for a minute or two more. This gives them a “wok fried” quality and makes it crispy and brown. Also, it removes all the moisture for a light, airy and fluffy rice texture.

Plate yourself a generous portion and devour.

If you try this recipe, please drop me a note to let me know!