Recipes

How to Make Paleo Cauliflower “Rice”

By Jess

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Cauliflower is such an incredibly versatile vegetable. It’s a great substitute for potatoes, rice, and quinoa, and provides such a neutral palette that it can be flavored with any of your favorite spices. One of my personal favorite ways to prepare cauliflower is making it into rice, because it takes much less time to cook than traditional rice. Since you can eat cauliflower raw, all you need to do is heat it up to your desired temperature and it’s ready to eat! No more boiling water and letting rice simmer on the stove for an hour, you can have rice that’s just as good (or better) in less than ten minutes.

How to Make Cauliflower “Rice”- a delicious, low carb alternative to rice.

How to Make Cauliflower “Rice”- a delicious, low carb alternative to rice.


I grated my cauliflower by hand, but it can be done faster in a food processor. Don’t be afraid to try this if you don’t have a food processor, it took me less than two minutes to grate the entire head of cauliflower without one. Using the larger side of a cheese grater creates the perfect rice-sized pieces of cauliflower.

This recipe creates very standard cauliflower rice, but feel free to switch it up by adding in your favorite vegetables and spices. You can create Mexican rice, fried rice, or herbed rice with a few switches of ingredients. Try adding a bit of vegetable broth to create a more complex flavor, or make it heartier with a smidge of melted ghee. This recipe is a staple that’s perfect as a side dish as-is, but leaves room for a multitude of other recipes using this as a base.

pre-chop
cauliflower rice ingredients
cooking the onions and garlic

Cauliflower rice will impress even the biggest rice fans, and is so convincing that they won’t believe you when you tell them you used cauliflower instead! Plus, it provides more health benefits than traditional rice – cauliflower is high in vitamins C, K, and B6, and also provides folate, potassium, fiber, manganese, and phosphorus.

cauliflower in the pan


Ingredients

    • 1 head of cauliflower
    • ½ Vidalia onion
    • 3 cloves of garlic
    • 1 tbsp coconut oil
    • salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

  1. Remove leaves and stem from cauliflower; discard. Grate the entire head of cauliflower until it resembles rice.
  2. Dice the onions and garlic to your desired size.
  3. Add coconut oil to a pan over medium heat. Add in onion and garlic until slightly browned.
  4. Add in grated cauliflower, salt, and pepper and stir until heated.

Servings

Serving Size

1

Servings/Recipe

4

Print Recipe

    • it can’t be possible, fresh cauliflower can be found everywhere. just need to look further, or you can grow it at home 🙂 good luck!

    • I use frozen cauliflower when fresh is just too expensive. Just let it thaw and then whiz it up in your food processor. It’s wetter so depending on your recipe you can to cook the excess water out or smash it between a towel.

  1. I’m easing my family into Paleo. Tonight I made cauliflower ‘rice’ as a side dish. I absolutely loved it and what’s more, my 14 year old son came back for seconds. ‘Nuf said. :o)

  2. This a great side dish to make, I had this with the Zucchini meatballs. Very easy to make. I loved how I could taste the coconut flavour trough the cauliflower. Next time I make this I think I might add some mushrooms or peas or even some cashews for some crunch, I guess the additions are limitless 🙂

    Only challenge with this is that I got cauliflower all over the kitchen, either it is messy for everyone or I just don’t know how to grate correctly…

  3. Just curious, can cauliflower rice be frozen? I would love to just make it ahead and pull out serving sizes needed.
    Thanks

    • I process the cauliflower when I get it and than freeze it raw until I use it for the rice. Works great.

  4. I chop my cauliflower up , add a bit of leek or onion , a dash of curry power and salt. Microwave for about 6-7 minutes with ventilated lid and when it’s done , I add a bit of butter and mash it . It’s a hit at our house !

  5. So much you can do with this i love Cauli fried rice…add egg, peas, spring onion, bacon in small cubes and sesame oil.

  6. You can use ‘ghee’ (purified butter) instead of coconut oil. Indians use it for generations in all their cooking. It is quite easy to make it at home and stores well in a glass jar for over a year in the refrigerator OR it can be purchased ready made under the name ‘ghee’ at any
    Indian grocery store. It is the best form of saturated oil and I am sure you will love it once you get used to it! Since I have recently started the Keto diet, I use it liberally and enjoy it.

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