I love my veggies, and I especially love my cauliflower rice, but sometimes it’s difficult to put together a quick but really great tasting side (and let’s be honest with ourselves, making cauliflower rice is a pain in the a$$).  Enter: Urban Roots Veggie Side Kits! The brand reached out to me to see if I wanted to try their cauliflower rice kits, which provide two servings of veggies, complete with all the ingredients and instructions that you need to make them.  This was a no-brainer!  The kits require very minimal effort – some don’t even need to be cooked, some require a light chop (or none at all), and they’re ready within minutes.  The website even offers suggestions for what to pair each kit with in order to “make it a meal.”  Another thing I liked about the brand is that it does not require a subscription like so many other food prep kits/services do.  You can order these kits through grocery delivery services like Jet, Peapod, Fresh Direct, or Food Kick, and at grocery retailers like C-Town, Eataly, Fairway, FoodTown, Whole Foods, Key Food, and more!  Check out the website for a handy store locator.

I was able to try the Tabouli Style, Broccoli Fried, and Moroccan Spiced Cauliflower Rice Kits.  Each of them was stupid easy to prepare (10 minutes or less), came with very fresh ingredients, and was tasty!  Overall, I would recommend every single kit that Urban Roots offers and you should choose based on your own personal taste preferences, but here’s some more detail about each one (complete with my personal opinion):

Tabbouleh Style

Requirements: Light chop, mixing bowl.

Taste – 10/10

Ease of Prep – 9/10

Overall – 10/10

This is my favorite of all the kits I tried.  Personally, I love tabbouleh, so I understand that I am a little biased here.  That said, this kit was really easy because it required no cooking (and thus no reheating the next day when I had the rest of it for lunch at work) and the only reason it didn’t get a 10/10 for ease is because it required a rough chop of some tomatoes and the parsley.  I gave it a 10/10 overall because the flavor was great, the spices were a really good addition to the flavors in the tomato, cauliflower, and parsley, and it was about as easy to put together as Urban Roots could have possibly made it.

Broccoli Fried

Requirements: Pan for cooking

Taste – 10/10

Ease of Prep – 9/10

Overall – 9/10

This one was VERY tasty, and the only reason why I gave it an overall 9/10 was because it’s a bit caloric with the sesame sauce being full of oil.  If you split the kit into two separate servings, it’s perfectly reasonable, however I sometimes just enjoy a ton of veggies with my dinner, so to have two servings of oil wasn’t ideal.  Aside from this, the sauce was delicious, and paired really well with the broccoli and cauliflower.  Also, broccoli and cauliflower is probably one of my favorite combinations, so I might be a little bit biased.

Moroccan Spiced

Requirements: Pan for cooking

Taste – 6/10

Ease of Prep – 8/10

Overall – 8/10

This was my least favorite kit, only because I think the Moroccan spices just aren’t my jam.  They have a very strong flavor, and there were a lot of spices in the spice pack.  If I try this one again, I might just use half of the spices and see where that leaves me.  Ease is 8/10 because this one requires cooking (though no cutting/chopping required so minimal dishes were dirtied).  Overall I gave it an 8/10 because I think it wasn’t objectively as good as the tabbouleh kit, but I also don’t think it should be penalized for my personal opinion of Moroccan spices.

Urban Roots makes a ton of other products, so check out their website for some more variety!

Stay fit and eat fried [cauliflower] rice, all!