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These loaded Vegan Yum Bowls top brown rice with black beans, avocado, tomato, and homemade yum sauce. Inspired by the Café Yumm Original Bowls. Vegan and Gluten-Free.
These Café Yumm-Inspired Yum Bowls have everything you need in a hearty, nutritious, and filling vegan brown rice bowl—creamy avocado, fresh vegetables, protein-packed beans, and plenty of toppings. The star of these grain bowls, vegan Yum Sauce, ties it all together! Make them for meal prep, or whenever you’re craving the flavors of these delicious bowls at home.
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Fully Loaded Yumm Bowls At Home
For me, going on vacation means two things: (1) some R&R and (2) treating myself to a Café Yumm bowl at the airport. This popular Pacific Northwest fast-casual chain sells my favorite rice and bean bowls. It’s my meal of choice at the Portland airport and I’ll usually go out of my way to pick one up when I’m out running errands.
There’s so much good stuff in these vegan grain bowls, like tomatoes, avocado, black beans, and salsa, but it wouldn’t be an Original Café Yumm Bowl without the Yumm Sauce drizzled over top. This cheesy, savory, and tangy sauce is SO good that I constantly find myself craving it at home.
My Yum Bowl Recipe is my vegan-friendly copycat version of the classic. Just like with my Copycat Vegan Zuppa Toscana, it’s as good as what you’d get at the restaurant – but you’re free to customize or double up on the toppings as much as you want (without the extra $$$). If you’ve never been to the PNW but love a good grain bowl with a delicious sauce, you’re going to love these Yum Bowls.
Ingredients for This Yumm Bowl Copycat
These copycat Café Yumm bowls are made with almost all of the same ingredients as what you’d find at the chain restaurant, including an amazing homemade vegan Yum Sauce. These are the key ingredients you need:
- Brown Rice: the real Café Yumm bowls are made with either organic brown rice or Thai jasmine rice. You can stay true to the original if you want or swap the brown rice for white rice, quinoa, or the cooked grain of your choice.
- Beans: black beans are the classic choice, but pinto beans, cannellini beans, and kidney beans are good options, too. Stick with canned beans to keep things simple or go all-out with my spicy-ish Instant Pot Chipotle Black Beans.
- Tomatoes: diced fresh tomatoes give these bowls a hint of freshness.
- Avocado: between the avocado, sour cream, and yum sauce, there’s a ton of creaminess in these grain bowls!
- Toppings: to round out every bite, I topped the yum bowls with black olives, chunky salsa, vegan shredded cheese, and a dollop of dairy-free sour cream. I wanted to keep the toppings as close to the real thing as possible but you can easily mix and match them as much as you’d like.
Yum Sauce: the star of this recipe! After countless tests, I discovered that a blended mix of slivered almonds, nutritional yeast, garbanzo beans, lemon juice, and a few more pantry staples yields the most realistic Yumm Sauce around. It’s creamy, cheesy, and comes with a tangy kick! I highly recommend making a double batch to drizzle on even more grain bowls, use as a vegetable dip, toss with Tex Mex salads, and so much more.
How to Make Vegan Yum Bowls
- Chop the veggies, cook the rice, and warm up the beans.
- Divide the rice and beans between serving bowls. Top each bowl with half of the tomato, avocado, olives, salsa, cheese, and sour cream.
- Generously drizzle each bowl with yum sauce, then garnish with cilantro. Serve immediately and enjoy.
Caitlin’s Cooking Tips
- Prep all of the bowl components ahead of time. You can save a lot of time here by chopping the vegetables, cooking the rice, preparing the toppings, and making the yum sauce 2 to 3 days in advance. Once they’re ready, pack each of the components into individual airtight containers and keep them in the fridge until you’re ready to assemble the bowls.
- Wait to add the avocado! Do not add the avocado until right before you serve the yum bowls. If it’s added too early or sits for a long time, the avocado will turn brown and lose its fresh, creamy flavor.
- Save time with leftover cooked rice: Already have cooked rice in your fridge? Go ahead and use it instead of cooking a fresh batch. Before assembling the bowls, heat up the day-old rice in a medium pan with a small splash of water over medium heat until it’s steaming and warmed through. You can also warm the leftover rice and beans together in the microwave.
Serving Suggestions
It’s no secret that rice bowls are perfect for meal prep and these yum bowls are no exception. They hold up well and still taste amazing even after sitting in the fridge for a few days. The mix of beans, veggies, and grains should tie you over for a few hours, but if you’re particularly hungry, serve the bowls with carrot sticks with this Creamy White Bean Dip for dipping or a side of these Crispy Ranch Potatoes or this Roasted Garlic Sesame Broccoli.
If you’re looking for more vegan meal prep ideas, you’ll also love these Chipotle Black Bean Burrito Bowls, these Saucy Peanut Tempeh Bowls, and these Nourish Bowls with Maple Turmeric Tofu!
How to Store Leftover Yum Bowls
I recommend serving the yum bowls immediately after they’re assembled and dressed in the homemade yum sauce. If you end up with leftovers, pack them into an airtight container and store them in the fridge for up to 5 days. The avocado will brown over time but the bowls will still taste good.
Vegan yum bowls couldn’t be more perfect for meal prep. To keep everything fresh, divide the rice and beans between meal prep containers and top each one with tomatoes, olives, salsa, cheese, and sour cream. Store the sauce in a separate container, then drizzle it over the assembled bowls along with fresh avocado right before serving.
Substitutions and Variations
- Vegetable Add-In Ideas: Bulk up these bowls with even more vegetables, like shredded red cabbage, diced bell peppers, a diced jalapeno (seeds and veins removed), chopped leafy greens, carrot matchsticks, or roasted broccoli.
- Add a Protein Boost: The black beans give these bowls a good amount of fiber and plant protein but you could add an extra boost with my Baked Crispy Tofu or my Smoky Marinated Tofu, my Easy Baked Tempeh, or a 1/4 cup of steamed edamame.
- Optional Toppings: Finish the bowls with slivered almonds, salsa verde, sunflower seeds, tortilla chips, guacamole, or pickled jalapeno slices on top.
- Yum Sauce Substitute: No time to make the yum sauce? You can swap it for a drizzle of this Vegan Chipotle Mayo, vegan ranch dressing, this Creamy Cilantro Dressing, or vegan cheese sauce.
Recipe FAQs
Café Yumm is a chain of fast-casual restaurants with locations throughout Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Their specialty is fast, inexpensive, and healthy food topped with their signature Yumm Sauce.
The original Café Yumm Yumm Sauce is made primarily with oil, garbanzo beans, almonds, herbs, nutritional yeast, and garlic.
Yes, Café Yumm’s signature Yumm Sauce is safe for vegans since it’s naturally dairy and egg-free.
Enjoy! If you make this recipe and decide to share it on Facebook or Instagram, don’t forget to tag me @FromMyBowl + #FromMyBowl! I would also love it if you could leave a comment below with a recipe rating! Thank you for the support 😊
Yum Bowls (Café Yumm Inspired)
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked brown rice or sub white rice or quinoa
- 1 can beans rinsed and drained
- 1 roma tomato fine dice
- 1 avocado sliced
- 1/4 cup black olives sliced (optional)
- 1/4 cup mild or medium chunky salsa
- 1/4-1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- 2-3 tablespoons sour cream optional; I used dairy-free
- Yum Sauce for drizzling (see below)
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Instructions
- Prep: Chop the veggies and cook your rice, if you haven’t already. I like to warm my beans on the stove; add them to a medium pan with a small splash of water and sauté over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes, until steaming. If you are using leftover rice, you can also heat it up in a separate pan using the same method. (Alternatively, you can warm the rice and beans in the microwave)
- Assemble: Divide the rice and beans between serving bowls. Top each bowl with half of the tomato, avocado, olives, salsa, cheese, and sour cream. Generously drizzle each bowl with Yum sauce, then sprinkle the cilantro on top.
- Serve & Store: Serve immediately; Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
