Test Kitchen – Cauliflower “Mashed Potatoes” With Garlic

First of all let me confess that I am NOT a fan of cauliflower. I normally love vegetables and will eat pretty much all of them in one form or another, but cauliflower has never been of interest. That crap looks gross to me. As un-PC as this statement may be, to me cauliflower looks like albino broccoli.

Look at it! Just sitting there looking all… white.

Plus it has no taste. Why bother eating some ole nasty stuff just because it is a vegetable?

I swear, when I was a child my mother used to make us eat everything on our plate. She used to try to cover vegetables she knew I didn’t like in cheese sauce or gravy, hoping I’d be able to eat it. THAT TRICK NEVER WORKED MOM! Didn’t you notice how healthy the dog was?

But with the impact that mashed potatoes have on blood glucose, I decided that perhaps it was time to broaden my horizons and embrace one of the five vegetables I’ve avoided eating most of my life. I’ll tell you about the other four another time.

So I decided to do a test kitchen experiment and share with you the recipe of another food blogger. I found  something that sounded pretty interesting on a blog called Eat Drink Better that she called Protein Packed Cauliflower ‘Mashed Potatoes.’

FYI in addition to this one, she has a lot of really interesting recipes, so I suggest you stroll on over and check her blog out.

It was more interesting to me than many of the other recipes I came across simply because she considered the need for protein in the meal, and the laziness of most cooks who don’t want to make a separate dish, as well as our desire to get dinner on the table quickly. Brilliant! Her recipe seemed simple enough, calling for just five ingredients that cooked up in30 minutes. I was sold!

Test Kitchen Recipe Ranking

Made the recipe last night exactly as written; I ate some and let the omnivores of the household eat some as well. These are known vegetable haters – the only thing they will even touch is red pepper slices, salad (occasionally), green beans and corn on the cob. Even they liked it!

For my taste it had too much garlic. But I was so proud of myself for eating some cauliflower, I just put it on the fork with my other food and knocked it back anyway.  On my plate were vegan collard greens and country fried chick’n seitan.

My suggestions if you decide to try this recipe yourself:

1. I used one large clove of garlic, so I’d be sure to either use roasted garlic as suggested to make the garlic taste milder, or modify the recipe to “one small or half a large clove of garlic” so that the garlic taste isn’t overpowering.
2. When cooking the lentils, use vegetable broth instead of plain water. Makes a huge difference in the taste.
3. Make sure you thoroughly drain your cauliflower/lentil mix of all moisture to avoid wateriness. If you DO need more moisture, use a splash of plant milk instead.
4. Feel free to add other ingredients to make it tastier and more reminiscent of the mashed potatoes you remember from your pre-vegan days such as nutritional yeast for a cheezy taste, a bit of vegan butter spread for richness, salt, and plenty of black pepper.  (Which is what I did with my left-overs and I have to say it was a huge improvement)
5. No need to bother with making nut butter – I threw in 7-8 raw cashews I’d soaked for 15 minutes and it worked just fine.

Tags: cauliflower recipe, easy recipes, lentil loaf recipe, vegan protein sources, vegan recipes, vegan side dishes

Category: Side Dishes, The Test Kitchen