Hacking your boring rice bowls start with cheap seasonings – fish sauce, soy sauce. And as the disposable income rises, that can become chilli con carne, Japanese yellow curry and pickles, or a mound of garlic prawns. But there is so much more we can use to top a simple bowl of rice, and so many ways we can make that rice more exciting in itself. Here are my current favourites:

The DIY poke bowl

Rather than plating up for everyone, I just give everyone a warm bowl of sweet-sour sushi rice and let them pick which of a selection of toppings they want to add. Think of it as a poke smorgasbord with sashimi tuna and/or salmon, some grilled and fatty pork belly, cooked prawns, edamame, cubed avocado, pickled ginger, nori, furikake, rounds of baby cucumbers, shallots, mayo, blanched and shredded snow peas in sesame oil, squares of silken tofu marinated in a ponzu sauce, diced jalapenos, sliced radish, herbs like coriander or dill, seaweed and anything else that takes your fancy.

Mughal rice cooker rice bowl

The rice cooker has more than halved the hassle of making rice bowls, and things get even more interesting when you use chicken stock instead of water and add aromatics like crushed cardamom pods or a handful of dried fenugreek leaves to the pot. You can also add sultanas that will plump up while cooking, and pour melted butter into wells made with a wooden spoon handle pushed through the cooked rice to the bottom of the pot. Turn on the cooker again and, if you’re lucky, you’ll get a crispy brown base on your rice. I like to top this buttery rice with a tandoori mixed grill of meats – spiced barbecue lamb chops, skewers of chook flavoured with a red tandoori pastes, or as murgh malai, where chicken breast pieces are marinated in a mix of cream, yoghurt and ground almonds or cashews with ginger, garlic, lemon and black pepper. Grill these skewers standing in the air fryer or on a grill pan. Serve the meat on top of the herbed rice with a coriander, cucumber and raw onion salad, a dollop of mint chutney, a pile of roasted cashews or toasted almonds, a spoonful of your favourite chutney (mango, lime or date) and a pool of hung yoghurt mixed with a little salt, rose water and saffron.

Korean bibimbap

This Korean staple is like the original rice bowl. Warm rice is topped with a clockface of different julienned veg (carrots, bean sprouts, radish, cucumber)
mushrooms, cooked beef or chook, gochujang and an egg yolk. All is arranged in quadrants, so they contrast in colour. This all gets mixed together just before eating. The name tells you so – ‘bap’ means rice; ‘bibim’ means mixed.

The new luxe rice salad

Try my old housemate’s robust take on a rice bowl loaded with chunks of prawn, slow-roasted cherry tomatoes and, instead of rice, farro. This had been cooked until still a little nutty, in a seafood stock that is heady and intense from prawn heads and shells. So, buy your prawns whole and don’t skimp on the shrimp – you’ll need loads of heads and shells to get a big enough bisquey flavour. And the chunks of prawn meat must almost overwhelm the grains, so be generous. Lemon zest and chopped dill and parsley are the only garnishes required.

More rice bowl recipes

• Chicken katsudon
• Japanese tuna rice bowls
• Green and gold rice bowls
• Chicken burrito bowl