If you are looking to add more protein to your morning routine, this high-protein breakfast bowl is your answer. Cooked quinoa, cottage cheese and hard-boiled egg mix with creamy avocado, a hit of chili oil, a squeeze of lime juice and addictive pepitas for a fully-satisfying meal. The high-protein breakfast bowl contains 32g of protein which is enough to keep most of us going well past lunch and possibly all the way to dinner.
Are You Getting Enough Protein?
For the past several years, I rarely ate breakfast at all. I started the day with a Starbucks ice flat white with oat milk and then didn’t eat until lunch. It never seemed like an issue. It’s not that I have anything against breakfast, but I guess my coffee was giving me enough milk protein to prevent me from feeling hungry.
That said, I would often notice two things — either I would be starving around 10:30 a.m. or I would get brain fog and lose both motivation and attention span.
Learning About Macros
Earlier this year, I decided to take a health and life coaching certification course. Not sure exactly what I’m going to do with it yet, but you have start by examining your own health in order to prepare to help others.
In my course, I learned about macros (proteins, carbs and fats). I learned that I was not getting nearly enough protein in my diet. Then I experimented with making some minor changes to see if I noticed a difference in my day to day.
As a mostly plant-based eater, getting enough protein can be a challenge. I decided to make an effort to increase my protein, and breakfast was the best place to start. My high-protein breakfast bowl is the one delicious result of my experiment.
High Protein Breakfast Bowl – Immediate Results
There’s nothing like instant gratification. When I increased my morning protein, I noticed a distinctive improvement in my overall energy level and attention span immediately.
I didn’t have a huge appetite in the morning so eating a high-protein breakfast bowl was overwhelming. Instead, I started with something simple. I made a fresh batch of Jenny’s Homemade Vanilla Coconut Ginger Granola and stocked up on Ellenos Vanilla Bean yogurt.
A half-cup of my granola has 8g of protein, and the 5.3 oz container of Ellenos yogurt adds 12 for a total of 20g. That’s a solid breakfast and I didn’t feel like I was forcing food down my throat.
For the first week, I made a point of stopping to monitor how I felt around 1030am. There was a noticeable difference in my overall alertness. I wasn’t staring at my computer like a zombie. My mind wasn’t wandering.
Power Breakfast – Blessing or Curse?
After about 3 days of eating a high-protein breakfast, I found that I would be starving pretty much immediately after I woke up. Funny how fast the brains re-programs. At first I saw it as a curse, but I now see it as a blessing. My body is gently reminding me that I will feel better if I eat a solid breakfast.
I knew I’d get worn out on granola and yogurt, so I wanted to get more options into my morning rotation. I started experimenting with other options for a high-protein breakfast bowl.
The most obvious sources of protein are meat and fish. I don’t eat meat at home, and fish isn’t something I want for breakfast. So what are high-protein, breakfast-friendly options?
The top sources of protein that don’t come from meat or fish are: Eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese, quinoa and nuts. My high-protein breakfast bowl uses 4 of those 5 protein sources.
More Cottage Cheese Please
I got the idea for a high-protein breakfast bowl on Instagram. The recipe I saw had cottage cheese, which is an ingredient I thought I disliked. I don’t really know why I thought I disliked it. I love pretty much all other cheese, so I decided to give it a try. It ended up becoming an instant addiction, sort of like the addiction I had last year to labneh.
A serving of cottage cheese (1/2 cup) has 14g of protein.
Cottage cheese is the key ingredient to this high-protein breakfast bowl. It brings the moisture to the quinoa and eggs, and just a tad of saltiness so you don’t have to add more sodium. The chili oil gives you just enough spice to balance out the savory. Sub a pinch of red pepper flakes and a small drizzle of olive oil if you don’t have a good chili oil at home.
Dicing Avocado – A New Trick
The high-protein breakfast bowl calls for a whole avocado. If you don’t like that much, just use a half. It doesn’t change the protein content of the bowl.
I can pretty much slice and dice an avocado in my sleep, but I learned a new trick recently from watching Wil Yeung videos on YouTube. He slices off the narrow side of the avocado first, and then squeezes the little “hat” to get that part out. This prevents you from accidentally getting the root tip of the avocado into your bowl, which somehow always seems to happen.
From there, you can run your knife around the avocado and you usually would. Split the two halves apart, remove the see and carefully slice the avocado into small cubes right inside the shell. Run a spoon around the inside of the skin to remove the diced pieces.
All About Texture
For me, a dish is not complete without a good mix of textures. My favorite way to add texture to a dish is to throw some pepitas on top at the end. They go with literally everything. Adding a few tablespoons of pepitas to the high-protein breakfast bowl is not only satisfying for the crunch factor, it also adds around 6g of protein.
High-Protein Breakfast Bowl – 5 Minute Meal
I don’t know about you, but I’m lazy when it comes to cooking in the morning. Even though I’m blessed with a remote job, I still like to be able to just grab a few things from the fridge when hunger strikes.
I meal prep on weekends. Cooking a big batch of quinoa is usually one of those prep steps. Now I am hard-boiling 5 or 6 eggs at the same time. You can also cheat and buy pre-boiled eggs and pre-cooked quinoa —. no judgement. If you have those two items done, high-protein breakfast bowl is a 5-minute meal.
High-protein breakfast bowl also travels well. If you are taking it with you to work, just make sure you squeeze the lime juice over the avocado to keep it green and don’t mix the ingredients until you are ready to eat.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup cooked quinoa
- 1/2 cup cottage cheese
- 1 Hard boiled egg
- 1 medium avocado, diced
- 1 tsp chili oil (sub a pinch of crushed red pepper)
- 1 squeeze lime juice
- 2 tbsp pepitas
Instructions
- Place the cooked quinoa in a small bowl. If it is not already room-temperature, microwave the quinoa for 30 seconds to get the chill out.
- Add the cottage cheese, hard boiled egg (sliced in half) and diced avocado. Drizzle with chili oil, a squeeze of lime juice and top with pepitas. Using a fork, mash up the egg and mix everything together. Serve.
Nutrition
If this high-protein breakfast bowl leaves you wanting even more, you’ll love Quinoa Breakfast Bowl from Eat with Clarity. I also have an adapted version of this recipe called Brussel Sprout and Pesto Quinoa Bowl that you may want to check out.
Nutrition Resources
Wondering how much protein you should be eating? Is it possible you may be eating too much? This article from Mayo Clinic is a good place to start for more education.
If you want to do the experiment I did on measuring your protein, fat and carbs you might want to download MyFitnessPal and pay for the macros upgrade. I did that for a month until I made the adjustments I wanted and then dropped back down to the free version.
