Recipe: Low Carb Cauliflower Mash

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I’ll be the first to admit that I miss potatoes, rice and bread. I don’t miss them every minute of every day, but when I go to a supermarket that has its own bakery the smell of freshly baked bread is both appealing and pure torture.

And don’t get me started with patisseries ..

I’ve been eating a lot of vegetables since I switched over to the ketogenic diet a few weeks ago. Most of the time I’m quite happy to have meat or fish with steamed or boiled vegetables, or possibly some sautéed mushrooms.

However a lot of people have been telling me that cauliflower mash is a good option to try as a replacement for potatoes (or rice). I’ve never been a terribly big fan of cauliflower. I don’t hate, but it’s not a vegetable that I’d get terribly excited about either. The other issue I’d run into previously was that eating cauliflower when you’re cooking for one invariably led to a lot of leftovers. The upside to this diet, as I’ve discovered, is that you tend to eat more vegetables, so that vegetable that would have lasted 4 meals now only does 2.

There are plenty of recipes out there for making cauliflower mash. At the simplest level you simply cook the cauliflower and then blend it with some butter and maybe a bit of cream, season it and serve it.

However there are slightly more elaborate versions of the recipe out there that are worth exploring.

I’ve been making a version of cauliflower mash based of this recipe. I’m a strong believer in adding garlic to food where I can and I’ll probably make a few more tweaks to this recipe over time. Remember, recipes aren’t “written in stone”. You can tweak them based on what you’ve got in your pantry and what you have access to. (and why so many recipes refer to a single clove of garlic is still a mystery to me!)

Anyway this is super easy to make using a microwave:

5 from 2 votes

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Cauliflower Mash with Cheese

A very tasty low carb alternative to mashed potatoes

Course Side Dish

Cuisine Low carb

Keyword cauliflower, low carb

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 12 minutes

Total Time 17 minutes

Servings 1 portion

Calories 150 kcal

Ingredients

• 50 g cheddar
• 1/2 head of cauliflower
• 25 g butter
• 1 - 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbsp cream
• salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Clean the cauliflower head and trim off the green stalks.
2. Cut it in half and put one half away.
3. Chop up the half cauliflower you're going to cook and put it into a microwave friendly dish without a lid. Add the butter and cream to the dish.
4. Peel and dice the garlic. Add the garlic to the cauliflower.
5. Microwave on high for about 4 minutes without covering the bowl or dish.
6. Mix the butter and cream mixture so that it's coating the cauliflower.
7. Microwave for another 3 - 4 minutes
8. In a blender combine the cooked cauliflower with the cheese. It should give a fairly thick but pleasant mash.

Recipe Notes

Cooking times will vary depending on your Microwave. Mine is a 1000 Watt model so if yours is less powerful you might need to cook for longer.
Cauliflower shouldn't be overcooked, so if it's still a little crunchy when you're done that's okay.

It goes well with any meal where you could serve potatoes or rice as a side.

I suspect you could make a very nice version of this mash by boiling the veg or possibly steaming it before running it through the food blender.

Tip: don’t try using a hand blender to blend the cauliflower with the cheese unless you’ve chopped the cauliflower up quite a bit already and the cheese is already grated – I think I nearly killed my handheld blender making this tonight!

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