Basic Cauliflower Rice

A simple, useful substitute for rice.
Cauliflower rice - for when you don't want a bowl full of sugar.

I've already posted a recipe for Fried Cauliflower Rice, but I wanted to lay out the steps for the basic version. I've got two reasons for this. First, cauliflower rice is a nice side item to have in your repertoire. It works well with barbecue (For example, pulled pork in both regular and strawberry flavors) and lots of other southern style dishes. Second, I'm lazy. I have a few recipes in the pipeline that use cauliflower rice as an ingredient, and I'd like to be able to just say "2 cups of cauliflower rice" with a link to this post instead of listing cauliflower as an ingredient and then describing how to make it into cauliflower rice every time.

Nutritionally, cauliflower is awesome. It's a cousin to cabbage and broccoli, and eating more of it will make your momma proud. It's kind of bland, so it's good to add a few spices to it when you make it into rice, especially if you're planning to eat it as-is instead of using it as an ingredient. If you're using it as a substitute for rice in a recipe, you need to remember that rice has starches that thicken liquids, whereas cauliflower rice often contributes some liquid of its own, thinning things out.

This ingredient list almost feels silly.

Ingredients
1 head of cauliflower
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp garlic powder

Equipment
Food Processor (Recommended)
Microwave
Microwave-Safe Dish With Lid


First, trim any green leaves away from the bottom of the head of cauliflower. Then, cut the cauliflower into pieces that are small enough to fit into the shoot of your food processor. Use your food processor's grating disk to grate the cauliflower into very small bits.

If you don't have a food processor with a grating disk, see the notes.

Place the cauliflower into a microwave-safe dish with a lid. Add the salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and mix everything to distribute the seasonings. Microwave, loosely covered, on high for about 7 minutes.

"Loosely covered" means lay the lid on top of the dish, but don't seal it.

Notes

• If you don't have a food processor with a grating disk, you can use a handheld cheese grater instead. Trim any leaves from the head, but leave it intact otherwise. Then just start grating it like a head of cheese. I recommend using the smaller holes on the grater for this.
• Cauliflower varies in size, but on average one head of cauliflower will make between four and six cups of cauliflower rice.
• Loosely covering the dish as it cooks lets the cauliflower steam a little, but doesn't let it collect water in the bottom of the dish.
• I know this is a really short, simple post. Don't worry, though, I've got another one coming very soon.

Paleo Fried Cauliflower Rice (Alternate Title: Ricky Takes Crappy Pictures)



This is the first and last decent picture in this post.

 Before I even get started on this one, I've got a confession. This dish isn't "Technically Paleo." It's super close, and I'm going to tell you which ingredient to substitute to make it not just "Technically Paleo," but also "Seriously, Conforms-To-The-Letter-And-The-Spirit-Of-Paleo-Law Paleo," but as written, it does have one verboten ingredient - soy sauce.

Most soy sauce is vile stuff, made more from weirdly processed wheat than soy beans. The soy sauce I used isn't like that. It has exactly three ingredients - water, soy beans, and alcohol. No Gluten, no hydrolized wheat proteins. Since it has three ingredients, I know what they all look like, and I could, conceivably, put them together into their combined product without a laboratory, I'm OK with using a tablespoon of this particular soy sauce even though soy beans violate the "no legumes" rule. If you are not OK with it, you can still make this dish by Googling, purchasing, and using something called "coconut aminos" instead of the soy sauce. So, here's the recipe:

Ingredients

5 strips of bacon, cut into small pieces,
1 medium onion, diced coarsely
2 cups of riced cauliflower (steamed in the microwave or leftover from another meal)
1 egg
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tbsp soy sauce (or coconut aminos)
1/4 cup chopped spring onions

Equipment
Wok (Recommended, but a large pan will work OK)



First, cook the bacon over medium-high heat until it is browned completely (it should basically look like bacon bits). If you've got a spiffy electric wok like mine, that's about 350 degrees.

This bacon is not done yet. When it's done, you will want to eat it. Don't. You will burn yourself.

When the bacon is done, move it to the edge of the wok, and place the onion in the center. You will probably have plenty of bacon fat in the wok. Leave it there.

Sorry about the pictures this time around. I should have focused better.

When the onion is translucent, but not browned, move it to the side of the wok  and add the cauliflower.

The onions kept sliding back into the center of the wok. If that happens, just put the cauliflower on top of them.

Mix everything together and cook for about 2 minutes.

Starting to look like fried rice

Make an empty space in the middle of the wok, and add the egg to it. Scramble the egg.

Don't mix the egg into the cauliflower until it has cooked through. Just scramble it in the little well you made.

Once the egg is cooked, mix it into the cauliflower and add the soy sauce, garlic, and ginger.

Looking pretty good. Almost done.

Allow everything to cook for about 2 minutes, and mix in the scallions immediately before serving.

Notes

• A wok works well for this dish, because it allows you to cook one ingredient, and then move it up to the sides (where the wok is cooler) while you cook the next ingredient in the middle. If you use a regular pan, this method might not work so well. To compensate, you could cook the bacon, remove it from the pan, cook the onion, remove it from the pan, etc. Then toss everything back together and cook for a few minutes at the end.
• Because cauliflower has very little starch, it won't really brown the way that rice does. If you're waiting around for the cauliflower to brown, you're going to burn the onions, so don't do that.
• This is a basic fried rice that works well as a side dish. You could make it into a main dish by adding some more substantial protein. I've tried shrimp, thinly sliced beef, and chicken, and they've all worked out well. If you use any of those, you should cook them seperately first, and add them just before the soy sauce.
• This is a good way to use up leftover cauliflower rice. An average head of cauliflower makes about twice as much cauliflower rice as Miriam and I can eat in a sitting, so we always have plenty left over.