How To Make Riced Cauliflower Rice

Riced cauliflower is simple to prepare and with a little creativity a versatile supplement to your meal making. Riced cauliflower may be substituted for rice and such things as soups or used to stretch foods, especially, almost homemade dishes. For example, if your family likes rice or mashed potatoes which you want to stretch or would like to reduce the calories of each serving adding riced cauliflower in moderation, of course, will do this very nicely.

Why Make Riced Cauliflower Rice?

Cauliflower rice is a great way to use vegetables. Unlike traditional rice, cauliflower rice is low in carbs and has a mild taste. Whether you want to serve it as a side dish or add it to a pizza crust, it’s easy to prepare. You can either make your own cauliflower rice, or use a store bought version.

Cauliflower rice can be made from raw or frozen cauliflower. Raw cauliflower should be used within two days. If you want to make a large batch, you can freeze it. This is a quick and convenient method, as it eliminates the need to wash and chop the cauliflower. When you’re ready to cook it, you can thaw it quickly in the microwave for three minutes, or in a pan with oil or ghee.

When you’re ready to prepare your cauliflower rice, the easiest way to do it is to grate the cauliflower using a box grater or a food processor. You can also add some cheese or butter for added flavor.

Cauliflower is a nutrient-dense vegetable that can provide a good amount of protein and fiber, but it’s also low in calories. You can also use it in place of flour in a wide variety of recipes, including fried rice. However, you’ll want to avoid storing it too long, or you may get a sulfur-like smell.

Before making your own cauliflower rice, you’ll need to clean and cut the cauliflower into large florets. Then, you can either place it in the food processor to grind it into rice, or you can grate it in a box grater or a cheese grater.

You’ll need to be prepared to spend a few minutes cleaning and chopping the cauliflower. If you’re working with a box grater, you’ll need to be prepared to clean it as well. It’s also possible to grate the cauliflower in a food processor, although this process takes longer and will require more cleanup.

After rinsing the cauliflower, you can then chuck the florets into the food processor and pulse a few times. In this recipe, the pulsing helps to break down the florets into uniform cube-like pieces. Depending on how large you’re trying to make the resulting rice, you may need to stop and stir a few times during the processing.

If you’re using a food processor, you should only use the blade that’s meant to grate veggies. That’s because the special blades can break down the cauliflower into too fine a consistency.

You can also use a food processor to create a cauliflower fried rice. This is a great recipe for when you want to get your rice fix without any of the usual greasy or overcooked ingredients. Just toss the cauliflower into a pan, season it with your favorite sauce, and add a couple of eggs if you’d like. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Finally, if you’re looking for a simple side dish, you can try a roasted version of cauliflower rice. Regardless of what type of cauliflower you use, the results should be delicious. Use your best judgment when deciding how to roast it, and don’t forget to garnish it with a sprig of scallions for a nice finishing touch.

How to make cauliflower rice

Two Prepare Your Cauliflower For The Food Processor

This is a quick and easy task, basically stripping it down and cutting into the usable pieces for easy chopping by the food processor, which consists of:

• washer cauliflower with warmish water
• on a cutting board with a large sturdy knife, chop off the leaves and the hard center stalk
• cut the cauliflower into 1-2 inch florets.

How to Make Cauliflower Rice

To convert your florets to riced cauliflower you can use a food processor. I find food processors fast and easy and here are the essential steps:

• Put the florets into a food processor.
• For smaller food processors, you may need to do this into multiple small batches.
• Don’t overfill your food processor. For best results feel your food processor to about the center of the slicing blade. Otherwise, you may end up with large pieces which need to be cleaned out and reprocessed.
• Pulse your food processor several times until it arrives at the size and consistency you desire, usually, about the size of sushi rice grains. At least, that’s the size I use since I don’t really cook with long grain rice.

Cooking Note

alternatively, you can use a hand grater or high-speed blender to riced cauliflower as well, but usually, the results are not quite the same.

Shopping Note

I’ve not had any difficulty finding frozen riced cauliflower in the local grocery stores and it can be a timesaver if you prefer not to do a couple of bulk batches on a weekend or on a given day. Also, if you don’t have the time, tools, or desire to make riced cauliflower yourself the grocery store version can be a real timesaver and still provide a healthy food alternative. When working with frozen riced cauliflower from the grocery store I usually either let it fall in the refrigerator until ready to use it or give it a quick spin in the microwave according to the instructions on the package before including it in my other dishes which I may be preparing.

Uses of riced cauliflower

I find riced cauliflower to be exceptionally useful and I use it in any number of ways so here’s a quick list of some of the ways that I have used it:

• adding rice cauliflower to my rice cooker on preparing a fresh batch of rice.
• Adding riced cauliflower to instant mashed potatoes to make almost homemade mashed potatoes and achieving the same effect as I get to my rice.
• Adding a small helping of rice cauliflower to a soup or stew. I usually do this in the last 5 to 10 minutes of cooking as riced cauliflower doesn’t take long to cook. I especially like to do this in soups where a small quantity of rice or potatoes is added.
• Adding riced cauliflower in the grated cheese later of many dishes will nicely incorporate them into your meal. For example, adding riced cauliflower to the different cheese layers of a lasagna may happen to be making.

These uses of riced cauliflower not only stretch the dish, but it also reduces the calories of each serving and improved nutrition.

If you want to use it straight is a seasoned side dish, that works very well too, and we frequently do so.