cauliflower Archives * My Hot Southern Mess

I’m a veggie girl. I have always been one. One of my grandma’s favorite stories about my childhood was eating dinner and me patiently waiting for everyone to be done and asking to finish the vegetables. Yeah, I was a weird kid. I loved all of those veggies that you hear of kids hating, broccoli, spinach, lima beans, cauliflower, and more. Even today, I have gone through vegetarian periods while my husband has been away. My husband on the other hand was anti-vegetable when we first married but has started to learn to love veggies now that he is in his thirties. One of those vegetables is Cauliflower.

I serve cauliflower on a regular basis in our house. Usually I serve it raw, steamed or roasted but sometimes I mash it. I always forget about how good cauliflower mash is and I was reminded again this month while working with Allrecipes and Swanson. This month one of my Allrecipes Allstar activities was to make, review and take pictures of various Swanson recipes and one of the ones I chose was their Parmesan Garlic Cauliflower Mash and I am glad I did. It was delicious and super easy to make!

It honestly couldn’t be any easier. You take a head of cauliflower and cut into florets add to a pot with garlic and chicken broth. For the broth, while I am a huge fan of making my own chicken broth sometimes I use prepared and Swanson now has unsalted broth which I loved! I’m not a fan of overly salted dishes. You have to let the flavor of the food come through and the unsalted broth does just that!

Once you have your ingredients in the pot bring it to a boil, cover, reduce heat and cook for 15 minutes, drain reserving broth and mash adding broth, butter and parmesan. You can also season with some salt and pepper and then voila you have an awesome and easy to make side dish in less than 30 minutes! Add it to some roast chicken and maybe some green beans or broccoli and you have yourself a delicious and nutritious meal.

What is your favorite way to serve Cauliflower? Have you tried it mashed?

Parmesan Garlic Cauliflower Mash

Author:

Country Girl Gourmet

Ingredients

4 cups cauliflower florets
1¼ cups Swanson® Chicken Broth
4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon butter

Instructions

Heat the cauliflower, broth and garlic to a boil in a 10-inch skillet over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium. Cover the skillet and cook for 15 minutes or until the cauliflower is tender.
Mash the cauliflower mixture in the skillet and stir in the Parmesan cheese and butter. Season to taste.

Parmesan Garlic Cauliflower Mash | Country Girl Gourmet

Recipe from Allrecipes.com

I am an Allrecipes Allstar Brand Ambassador (a voluntary position) and I’m not compensated for my work with Allrecipes.com. Products received from advertiser are only used for experienced-based reviews on Country Girl Gourmet. The reviews, content and opinions expressed in this blog are purely the sole opinions of Country Girl Gourmet.

My husband recently decided he wanted to try the Paleo diet so I have been trying to come up with different things for him to eat. He is a classic meat and potatoes guy so I began a search for a version of “mashed potatoes” that he could eat. I had known for years that cauliflower could be used as a substitute so I began my search for a recipe. With the popularity of the Paleo diet I figured there had to be a good recipe out there. There were recipes out there that were low carb but not Paleo and a few that were Paleo but unfortunately for me used coconut. I’m allergic to coconut otherwise I would have tried them. So after reading a bunch of recipes I came up with my own using the chicken broth mashed potatoes method I had used in the past.

The ingredients are basic and simple. You can use your own broth/stock. Typically I do. I used this because I was out and had on hand. To my understanding with Paleo cooking if you use canned stock/broth look for sugar in the ingredient list. If it has it skip it.

You will need to chop your cauliflower into florets.

and smash your garlic. You can use 2-4 cloves depending on your taste.

Next,in a medium sized pot add cauliflower florets, smashed garlic and chicken broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cover and cook for 20 minutes until cauliflower is fork tender. Drain cauliflower in a colander, reserving liquid.

Place cauliflower in bowl of food processor and season with onion powder,salt and pepper. Cover and process on high until creamy, adding reserved liquid if needed.

and there you go creamy faux mashed “potatoes”.

I served this with a simple pan seared chicken breast and steamed broccoli and topped my faux mashed potatoes with bacon. All four of my kids ate this including my picky eater… not a single kid knew it wasn’t regular mashed potatoes.