Six New Recipes to Support Your Gut Microbiome
For Love Your Gut Week 2025
We have created six new recipes designed to support your gut microbiome especially for Love Your gut Week. Our gut microbiome has the power to impact our immunity, heart health, mood, brain health and more. So, it’s important to look after it, and one of the easiest and tastiest ways to do so is through the food we eat.
With options for breakfast, lunch and dinner, each is full of gut-friendly ingredients and nutrients, like plant-based foods, fibre and fermented foods, as well as prebiotics, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. And because eating a variety of foods results in more diverse gut bacteria – in turn helping support physical and mental wellbeing – each recipe includes different microbiome-loving ‘hero’ ingredients.
Choose from tasty savoury breakfast option made with on-trend cottage cheese Pea, broad bean and cottage cheese pancakes, nutritious and delicious dinner option Poke bowl with sticky miso aubergine and kimchi, convenient and comforting One-pot chicken, leek & spinach lasagne with bean bechamel, vegan dish exploring ‘flavours less travelled’ Burmese-style chickpea tofu, satisfying and colourful Roast hake with walnut salsa verde, and nostalgic and comforting Baked quinoa rice pudding!
Which one will you try this Love Your Gut Week?
Pea, broad bean and cottage cheese pancakes
These savoury breakfast pancakes pack in plenty of whole food protein thanks to cottage cheese, eggs and three types of legumes – peas, broad beans and chickpeas – in the form of flour. Fresh herbs push up the plant count even more. Delicious served with just a squeeze of lemon and some pea shoots, or accompany with your choice of roasted tomatoes, sliced avocado, poached eggs or smoked fish.
Gut-friendly hero ingredient:
- Vegetables such as broad beans help to keep the gut healthy because they contain an abundance of polyphenols, a type of antioxidant. Broad beans are also a particularly good source of flavanols which help keep the balance of microorganisms in the gut healthy, by inhibiting the growth of various pathogens and increasing the populations of beneficial bacteria.
Poke bowl with sticky miso aubergine and kimchi
Poke bowls, with their mix of colourful vegetables, are always a nutritious choice, but this recipe boosts the gut health benefits even more. We’ve replaced half of the sushi rice with mixed colour quinoa to increase the fibre content of the poke base. As well as boosting the variety of fibres, different colours and varieties of the same plant contain different polyphenols which fuel the microbiome. The aubergine is cooked with miso paste and sprinkled with sesame seeds and we’ve also added a generous spoonful of kimchi. Serve with a rainbow of salad vegetables.
Gut-friendly hero ingredients:
- Fermented foods like kimchi can support gut diversity, with research showing that a diet rich in these foods can increase microbiome diversity and improve immune responses in just 10 weeks
- Sesame seeds contain sesamol, a compound with anti-inflammatory properties that can help reduce gut inflammation
- The different colours in a rainbow of salad vegetables correspond to different nutrients and phytochemicals. These bioactive plant compounds modulate gut bacteria and enhance gut barrier integrity.
One-pot chicken, leek & spinach lasagne with bean bechamel
This super convenient one-pot dish is a satisfying and healthy midweek meal option. The humble canned haricot bean makes a velvety and nutritious alternative to a traditional bechamel sauce and doesn’t require any pre-cooking, making it perfect for this speedy one-pot dish. The beans, sweet leeks and earthy spinach increase the fibre content and plant count.
Gut-friendly hero ingredients:
- Canned pulses like haricot beans contain protein, lots of dietary fibre and are low in fat, as well as providing a significant source of vitamins and minerals such as iron, zinc, folate, and magnesium. Dietary fibre has two important roles in the gut – it helps digested food pass through the gut by bulking the stool, and feeds the bacteria in the colon, aiding gut health.
- The vitamin C from the oranges in the accompanying side salad helps your body absorb more of the iron from the beans and spinach.
Burmese-style chickpea tofu
Chickpea flour is used by many different cultures to produce a polenta-like mixture which can be set in a mould. In Myanmar, it’s known as Shan Tofu and is often served sliced as a salad or deep-fried with a dipping sauce. We’ve paired the tofu with some typical Burmese-style salad ingredients, which happen to be high in both prebiotic soluble fibre to feed your microbiome, and insoluble fibre to aid digestion and help you feel fuller for longer.
Gut-friendly hero ingredients:
- Chickpeas are a significant source of dietary fibre, which acts as a prebiotic by feeding the beneficial bacteria in your gut
- Turmeric has an anti-inflammatory effect and studies have shown that it can be beneficial for the gut microbiome.
Roast hake with walnut salsa verde
Walnuts have long been associated with good heart health, but they’re also beneficial for the gut. In this recipe, they add a lovely crunch to salsa verde, a vibrant dressing made with a mixture of polyphenol-rich herbs and olive oil.
Gut-friendly hero ingredients:
- Walnuts are a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, which can help reduce inflammation and improve the gut lining and clinical trials have suggested that adults who eat walnuts every day have healthier gut bacteria
- Herbs are an easy way to help keep your gut healthy. People who eat more than 30 different plant types per week (including herbs) have a more diverse range of bacteria living in their gut than those who eat 10 or fewer types of plants per week.
Baked quinoa rice pudding
A gut-friendly revamp of the nostalgic comfort food classic baked rice pudding, this recipe swaps traditional rice for quinoa. We’ve also broken with tradition to use almond milk, which complements the pistachios and apricots used to flavour the pudding, plus it makes the pudding suitable for those following a vegan diet. We’ve given instructions for a hands-free long slow cook, as well as a speedier version that requires a little more attention.
Gut-friendly hero ingredients:
- Quinoa has nearly four times the amount of fibre compared to short grain rice and less than a third of its carbohydrate content. This, in combination with its higher protein levels also means the carbohydrate is absorbed more slowly into the blood stream than the rice version, reducing the likelihood of sugar spikes
- Eating a variety of plant-based foods, including fruits like apricots, can support the gut microbiome – as they are rich in fibre.
Happy Love Your Gut Week!