Delicious high protein Buffalo Chicken Rice Bowls are made with chicken breast, black beans, brown rice, cheese and smothered in hot sauce. Perfect for meal prep!
Buffalo Chicken Rice Bowls
These healthy Buffalo Chicken Bowls are high protein and high in fiber and so delicious I crave them! They’re great for lunch, an easy weeknight dinner, or meal prep. If you want to add some veggies, serve them with some avocado on top or a salad on the side. More easy meal prep recipes are this Taco Salad, Greek Chicken Rice Bowls, and Honey Sriracha Chicken and Broccoli Bowls.
Buffalo Chicken Bowls Ingredients
- Chicken: Cut three boneless, skinless chicken breasts into half-inch cubes.
- Onions: Dice a half cup of red onion. Feel free to use yellow onion if you don’t have red.
- Seasoning: Paprika, cumin, salt
- Black Beans: Rinse and drain one can of low-sodium black beans.
- Buffalo Sauce: You can buy it premade or make a fast homemade buffalo sauce with Frank’s Red Hot, melted butter, and garlic powder.
- Brown Rice: Swap it with white rice, quinoa, or cauliflower rice if you prefer.
- Cheese: You’ll need half a cup of shredded cheddar cheese.
- Scallions for garnish
How to Make Buffalo Chicken Rice Bowls
- Onions and Black Beans: Heat the oil in a medium pot over medium-low heat, add the onions, and cook until they’ve slightly caramelized. Stir in the beans, spices, and salt, and cook for a few minutes.
- Chicken: Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Next, heat a large skillet over high heat, and spray it with oil when hot. Cook the chicken for about five minutes, flipping it so it browns on all sides. Transfer the chicken to a bowl and toss with hot sauce.
- Assemble the Bowls: Put rice in each bowl and top with the bean mixture, cheese, and chicken. If you’re eating the bowls right away, I like to microwave them for 30 seconds to melt with cheese. Then top with scallions.
How to Meal Prep Buffalo Chicken Bowls
You can make ahead these buffalo chicken bowls and eat for quick meals over the next few days. Layer all the ingredients in small glass containers and store them in the fridge for up to four days. When you’re ready to eat, reheat them in the microwave until warm.
More Buffalo Chicken Recipes You’ll Love:
- Stuffed Buffalo Chicken Breasts
- Buffalo Chicken Meatballs
- Buffalo Chicken Dip
- Baked Buffalo Chicken Nuggets
- Buffalo Chicken and Bean Chili
Your comments are helpful! If you’ve tried this healthy Buffalo Chicken Rice Bowl recipe or any other on Skinnytaste, don’t forget to rate the recipe and leave me a comment below. And if you took a photo of it, share it with me on Instagram so I can reshare it on my Stories!
Buffalo Chicken Rice Bowls
Ingredients
- 3 8 ounce boneless skinless chicken breasts, diced into 1/2 inch cubes
- 1 teaspoon olive or canola oil
- 1/2 cup diced red onion
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 cup canned low sodium black beans, rinsed and drained
- 1/2 cup buffalo sauce, Franks
- 3 cups cooked brown rice
- 1/2 cup part-skim cheddar cheese, or dairy-free cheddar
- 1/4 cup chopped scallions
Instructions
- Heat oil in a medium pot over medium-low heat. Add onions and cook until they have caramelized slightly, about 5 minutes.
- Add black beans, paprika, cumin and salt; stir to combine and heat through, 3 to 4 minutes.
- While that cooks, heat a large skillet over high heat, when hot spray with oil and add the chicken.
- Cook until browned and cooked through in the center, about 5 minutes, flipping so it cooks on each side.
- Set aside in a medium bowl and toss with the hot sauce.
To serve
- Pour 3/4 cup rice in each bowl, top each with 1/4 cup beans and cheese, divide the chicken over the bowls.
- If eating right away, I like to melt the cheese by putting it in the microwave 30 seconds. Top with scallions.
For meal prep
- Refrigerate up to 4 days. To reheat, microwave about 3 minutes or until heated through.
This recipe is a repeat of mine for weight loss. So easy for prepped lunch and dinners!!!! Absolutely love it.
Made this for lunches this week and it will definitely be on repeat! So good! (Added bell pepper with the onion.)
This is my 17 year-old son’s favorite school lunch! He is lucky enough to have a microwave at school and has been requesting this for a few weeks now. When I try to take a break, he always wants this one back. 🙂
I made this tonight with quinoa and it was yummy! Very filling too. Thank you Gina for your delicious recipes.
Easy, flavorful and delicious! Not a leftover girl, but can’t wait to eat it again tomorrow. Thanks for sharing this healthy Buffalo chicken option!
My husband loves Buffalo anything. I’ll eat it but it’s not always my favorite. But I made this for Sunday football and we both really enjoyed it. The mix of beans and rice helped even out the heat. Will definitely make this again.
How many servings? Doesn’t say!!
Right above the ingredients it says “Yield: 4 Servings”
Delicious! Thank you !
This is the second time I have made this recipe and it has become a favorite for meal prep. I make it exactly as written, it’s delicious and it reheats great, perfect for a quick dinner or lunch.
Great recipe! I seasoned the chicken a bit as the recipe didnt call for it- pinch of sea salt, pepper, garlic & onion powder & chili powder.
Noticed only 1 teaspoon of oil to caramelize the onion wasnt quite enough (bottom of pot was burning a little).
Also used Trader Joes pre packaged frozen brown rice in microwave. Easy and quick!
The rice is listed as an ingredient but not in the instructions??
It says cooked rice.
Rice is in step 1 in the “To Serve” section
Another winner. I made thus moments ago. It was relatively effortless too make. Lol, I’ve made a number of Gina’s recipes and they never look as visually pleasing as Gina’s, but by God they taste delicious. This one was really good. I used the amount of seasoning as a preference. The flavors meshed together so well. For the rice I used Cilantro Lime Right Rice, it’s 90% vegetable base. Yum.
so good and very filling!
I made these yesterday and we both thought they were delicious. – we had the leftovers tonight! I used half the amount of Frank’s Buffalo Sauce, fearing they would be too hot, but found that using the whole amount would be fine. We added a bit of sour cream on top.
The prep takes some time, so I plan to try this as a freezer meal. I’ll pre-cook rice, bean mixture and chicken, and freeze each of them separately. We’ll definitely have this again!
Made this for first time tonight, big hit! Will be making again (and sgain!). Delicious!
Very easy to make and delicious!
Made as directed and it is delicious. This will be in regular rotation!
Meal prepped this for work this week and came out delicious!! Will be a repeat in the future 😁
Perfect!
I made this for dinner last night. It was quite tasty. I pretty much followed the recipe other than seasoning the chicken when I cooked it.
Its truly simple and delicious… we’ll be making again for sure. Couple of notes…
1. In the article above the recipe it mentions making your own buffalo sauce with garlic powder, butter and Frank’s. There is no mention of the butter or garlic powder in the recipe. I’d be curious to the amounts when you fix that – we just used straight Frank’s and it turned out great.
2. Crumbled Blue Cheese and a touch of diced celery completely works for this recipe – so much so you should add it to the article above under “fixins” or something like that. We also diced some red bell pepper and threw that in.. easy way to up the veggies.
Great job as always.
We thought it was amazing (and so easy to make)
As with many of your recipes we thought how to make it even healthier and I think red peppers and jalapeños diced up would be amazing.
But we loved it We’ll make it again and again!,
It was good. I had to add a splash of broth to the beans because they were dry and burning. I also add salt and pepper to the chicken. I made a home made honey mustard for my child and skipped the Buffalo for his portion. So everyone was happy
Unbelievably delicious! Wow, thoroughly enjoyed this. Very filling and satisfying.
This was just okay for me. Didn’t have a ton of flavor considering the high sodium count. The portion was generous, I couldn’t finish it.
So easy and soooo good!
Can this meal be frozen after it’s cooked?
I’ve been making a lot of meal prep bowls and things – and freezing them. This should freeze well. The scallions will wilt when frozen. Leave them out or don’t worry about it. They’ll still taste fine.
Could I barbeque the chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces and then cover in the hot sauce? Thanks!
I think that would be amazing!!
I made this for the first time tonight for lunch for the week. My husband tasted it and we both loved it so much, we ended up eating it for supper. Very easy to make and delicious. Can’t wait to try other recipes.
Made this for dinner tonight and it was absolutely delicious. I’ll be adding these bowls in to regular rotation. *Followed the recipe except I used a brown wild rice blend.
Great!!
Making this now and excited to try! Noticed that chili powder is in video but not in recipe. How much? Also. Paprika is listed as an ingredient but not in the directions. Thanks!
If you want to add, you can add 1/4 teaspoon but I omitted because it didn’t make a difference.