Making Cauliflower Rice in the Vitamix

With Link to Recipe for Sandy's Cheesy Cauliflower Bread Sticks

Though I've long been a fan of roasting cauliflower or turning it into mashed "potatoes," I harbored an irrational fear of using cauliflower to make pizza crust or cheesy bread sticks. Well, maybe not so irrational since I would often see the word "soggy" in the comments section of various cauliflower crust recipes, and the thought of going to so much trouble to produce wet bread was a psychological deterrent.

But since cauliflower is the "It" vegetable of 2015, I knew I had to get over my cauliphlobia or be doomed to living in the past.

This afternoon, I was feeling brave; so after checking out various websites on how to rice cauliflower, I finally took the plunge and retrieved my Vitamix from its hiding place under the cook top.

What took me so long?

One head of cauliflower yielded about four cups of raw cauliflower "rice."
I did not cook the cauliflower or attempt to reduce excess moisture
before mixing with eggs and cheese.

To begin with, ricing the cauliflower was really fun. I cut up a fresh head of this Cruciferous Magicus into manageable chunks and, as directed here, set my Vitamix to power level two. After a couple of pulses, I had a substance that could pass for rice.

This method has to be far more efficient than the common alternative of ricing the cauliflower with a cheese grater. Though that would probably work, it would also create a big mess and likely remove some finger tissue.

I don't need the added protein.

Obviously, I will never make it as a food blogger.
I was so hungry by the time my bread sticks
came out of the oven, I forgot to take a picture.
But they looked pretty much like Sandy's
and tasted amazing!

With my "rice" happily in its bowl, I was ready to try my first cauliflower "bread" recipe. My most trusted Medifast recipe source is Sandy's Kitchen; so I decided to try the cauliflower cheese sticks from that website. It looked fairly easy and I had all most of the ingredients. (Instead of grated mozarella cheese I just cut some sliced smoked gouda and sharp cheddar into bits and mixed them up with the riced cauliflower and two real eggs.)

Sandy's recipe is here, and I suggest you follow it as closely as you can. Ms. Bass does not merely type up random recipes and post them on her blog. She tests them out on herself and her family; and her dozens of delicious lean & green meals may be largely responsible for keeping so many Medifasters from dying of boredom on the Medifast 5&1 Plan.

Though Sandy suggests using some kind of loaf pan to start out with, I just broke out a cookie sheet and laid my parchment paper on it. I flipped the half-cooked dough rectangle after 30 minutes and upped the oven temp as directed, though I forgot to add more cheese.

Fortunately, this is a very forgiving recipe and the resulting cheesy cauliflower bread sticks were delicious. I dipped them into a bowl of plain low-sugar tomato sauce to which I added some magic seasoning a few grindings of Trader Joe's garlic spice blend.

If there's a lesson from this story it's that the recipes that intimidate me the most are often way easier and tastier than I thought they would be.

My low-carb Pinterest board is loaded with recipes I'm dying to try. Hopefully, this experience will give me the courage to continue moving out of my culinary comfort zone.