Make at Home Sweetgreen Copycat Bowls

Where is your level of Sweetgreen Fandom at? It seems like people either can’t live without it or don’t know or care about it at all. I am in the third bucket, I love Sweetgreen, but the nearest one is approximately 875 miles from me. I know…. So sad. Until they open one up in my farm town, I am making do with these make-at-home Sweetgreen copycat bowls. Let me teach you how I make them!

Even if you have a Sweetgreen nearby, the cost of their bowls can add up quickly if you are ordering one for lunch or dinner each day. At $14 a bowl, that is $70 a week for five bowls. That’s a lot! So, making these at home can save you some money and still allow you to have a bougie bowl that makes your life complete! 

What makes Sweetgreen so great?

Sweetgreen prides itself on uber-healthy, locally sourced, and socially responsible ingredients. When you eat a bowl from Sweetgreen, you can feel good about the food you are putting into your body. 

Plus, their food tastes great.  Sweetgreen salad and bowls consist of multiple different components, which is why it feels so difficult to make at home. If you were to make a bowl from scratch, with 10 ingredients like the Elote Bowl has, you would need over an hour to get everything prepared, cooked, and assembled. That’s not feasible for my lunchtime!

How to make a Sweetgreen Copycat Bowl or Salad.

Each of Sweetgreen’s menu items contains a large number of individual ingredients, which is why they feel so complicated to make. In their fall menu, each of their bowls has between 8 and 11 unique ingredients included. 

It sounds complicated, but many of the ingredients can be made ahead or you can use the freezer or other shortcuts to keep them on hand for you to whip up a bowl anytime. Let’s dive into the ingredient categories they use. 

Greens

The greens are the foundation of either a bowl or salad. Sweetgreen offers a choice of arugula, shredded kale, spring mix, chopped romaine, or baby spinach. 

All of these are easy to pick up a pre-washed package at the grocery store. I buy one big container each week and rotate through spring mix and arugula, with an occasional package of kale thrown in. Buy what you love and get started on your Sweetgreen Copycat lunch!

Warm grain

Sweetgreen offers quinoa, wild rice, or black lentils with many of their bowls. 

If you are only here for the salads, you can skip this part! I personally love the Sweetgreen grain bowls. The extra whole grain adds a density to lunch that you don’t get from just salad mix. 

However, the grains are part of why making a bowl from scratch takes a while. They need to cook first. So, there are a few shortcuts you can use to speed this up.

1. Freeze cooked quinoa, wild rice, or brown rice in single scoops, and just microwave it when you are ready. This can be a great use for leftovers or make a double or triple batch the next time you make it for dinner and freeze the rest in single servings. 
2. Use a 90-second microwave rice package that contains whole grains, like these from Uncle Ben’s or Seeds of Change. 

Protein

Sweetgreen offers several different protein choices including roasted or blackened chicken, roasted sesame tofu, roasted steelhead fish, and hard-boiled egg.

The protein is key to keeping you full for the afternoon and is also one of the most time-consuming parts of creating a bowl or salad. The key to making this simple is to pair cooking the proteins with your dinner and use the freezer to help ingredients last longer. 

A few shortcuts to speed this part up can be:

1. Use leftover meat from dinner as the protein on a bowl or salad. Be creative with new fun toppings and dressings to go with the flavor of the meat! 
2. Cook extra meat, dice it up and freeze in single-serving packages as we did with the grain. Then it is easy to just grab a serving out and microwave. 
3. Choose a quick-cooking protein like shrimp, halloumi, or tofu that can be sauteed on the stovetop in about 5 minutes. 

Warm veggie

This warm or cooked veggie is often a star of the show. Sweetgreen offers veggies like curry roasted cauliflower, spicy roasted broccoli, roasted brussels sprouts, roasted mushrooms, roasted sweet potatoes, or roasted corn and peppers. Hmm, are you noticing a roasting theme here?

I love roasted veggies, I make them for dinner a couple of times a week. My trick for these is to make extra and use leftovers on your bowl. This is a great way to use up leftovers and ensure you are eating a varied diet with many different nutritious veggies to ensure you get a wide variety of nutrients.  

Even if you don’t have roasted veggies with dinner, it is easy to take a single sheet pan and roast a variety of veggies on it so you have a variety for your bowls this week. Just take a minute to google roasting and the type of veggie and you will have the time and temp to get started. I usually just season it with olive oil, salt, and pepper when I cook them. Then if I want to add an extra flavor like curry, or red pepper flakes I can do so when I reheat them for my bowl. That way I have not committed to a flavor ahead of time in case my mood changes!

Cold veggie (usually 2-3)

Sweetgreen usually offers a couple of different cold veggies for an extra crunch and burst of nutrition. This could be anything from shredded cabbage, tomatoes, herbs like cilantro or basil, carrots, cucumbers, or avocado. 

This is really where your preferences start to kick in. What things do you love on your bowls? Pick up some of those when you are at the store each week. Many of these things can be used in other areas of your cooking too so you don’t have to eat an entire container of tomatoes in a week just on Sweetgreen copycat bowls.

A few tips and tricks for these:

• If you like cabbage, look for shredded coleslaw cabbage bags in the salad section so you don’t have to shred them yourself. 
• Use what you need from a veggie item then store it properly in the fridge for the next time. I can shred half a carrot and then wrap in saran wrap and store it for tomorrow when I will shred the rest for my bowl. 
• If the veggie is sturdy, wash and chop it when you buy it so it is ready to be added to the bowl. I find I will skip adding things I bought if I have to chop them while I am hungry and preparing the bowl. This just leads to food waste which we are trying to avoid. 

Topping (usually 2-3)

Almost done! Sweetgreen adds a couple of fun toppings to each of its bowls like diced apple, croutons, tortilla chips, goat cheese, lime squeeze, parmesan cheese, crispy rice, toasted almonds, and spicy sunflower seeds. 

Many of these are things you can buy or make ahead of time and have on hand to include in your bowls. Don’t be afraid to see if some of them can freeze (like nuts, seeds, and cheeses) to help them last longer. 

Some of these toppings are higher in calories so make sure you use them sparingly or pair them with a low-calorie partner like combining apples and goat cheese. 

I love a splash of lime on my bowls, but don’t always have lime on hand. I bought a small bottle of lime juice that I keep in the fridge. It’s not as bright as fresh lime but does work in a pinch when I am low on supplies and lasts in the fridge for months. 

Find your favorites and then mix things up occasionally with new ideas from Sweetgreen’s menu. 

Dressing/sauce

Yay! We are at the piece de resistance! The dressing is the final flourish to any bowl or salad and Sweetgreen has some fabulous ones! Their list includes jalapeno vinaigrette, peppercorn tahini, cranberry maple vinaigrette, miso sesame ginger, balsamic vinaigrette, spicy cashew, and their famous Green Goddess dressing. 

One of the keys to Sweetgreen bowls and salads is they are a calorie-conscious choice. This means their dressings need to be low-calorie and packed with flavors from herbs and strong-flavored low-calorie ingredients. 

Sweetgreen uses hot sauce as an additional low-calorie flavor enhancer on some of their bowls. So grab your favorite Sriracha, Cholula, or buffalo sauce and add a splash for some extra flair!

Today there are a ton of low-calorie dressing choices available at the grocery store, so spend some time browsing the next time you are there and grab one or two to try. If you would rather make your own dressings, there are a bunch of Sweetgreen Copycat recipes for their dressings available. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Green Goddess Ranch
• Spicy Cashew 
• Lime Jalapeno Vinaigrette  

If your favorite dressing isn’t on the list, just search for it on Google with the words “Sweetgreen Copycat” and you will find it. There are a ton of copycats out there!

Additional tips and tricks!

• Use the Sweetgreen menu as inspiration! No need to eat the same bowl over and over again. Mix it up with new bowls and seasonal inspiration from their own menu. 
• Make substitutions. These are your bowls, so put things you like and can easily get into them! In the Curry Cauliflower Bowl, they include raisins. It was weird the first time I had it. The second time, I substituted chopped apples and LOVED it! So don’t be afraid to substitute what you like better or have on hand and you may find a new fav!
• Cut and dice things to be the same size, I prefer smaller so I can get multiple different ingredients in one bite! 

If you need some inspiration to get started, here are some copycat recipes for specific bowls that I have used and enjoyed in the past. 

• The OG (and one of my faves!) Harvest Bowl  
• A former menu item, the Falafel Salad  
• A fresh and festive Corn Elote Bowl 
• The classic Kale Caesar Salad
• A light Guacamole Greens salad
• The Thai Salad that everyone loved before it left the menu  
• The Shroomami Bowl for all of the mushroom lovers out there!

How can making Sweetgreen Copycat bowls save me money?

Revisit the math I did above. For five bowls a week, you are spending $70 a week, which is $280 in a four-week month! That is more than I spend on groceries for the entire month, just to have less than ⅓ of my meals from Sweetgreen. 

By making a few bowls a week at home, you can cut the cost down to around $5 per bowl and then use the money saved to save for retirement or pay down debt. 

I am not advocating that a meal out (or delivered in) from Sweetgreen or another bougie salad place is a bad choice. If it is something you love, then treat yourself occasionally! Every time I travel, I see if there is one in an area near me, and make a point to pick up a bowl (The Harvest or Curry Cauliflower Bowls are my FAVES!)

It’s a matter of being intentional with your spending so that you are not mindlessly spending $70 a week on bowls without getting the enjoyment and value from your spending. 

So, what bowl or salad are you going to make first? 

I think I am going to work on recreating the Curry Cauliflower bowl. That curry roasted cauliflower they use is fabulous and so simple to make! Olive oil, curry powder, and cauliflower florets roasted at 425 degrees for 25 minutes. Boom! The best part of that bowl is done!

Do you have a favorite Sweetgreen copycat recipe or hack? I would love to hear about it! Share or link to the recipe in the comment below or over on our Instagram page!

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