Riced Cauliflower

If you haven’t been paying attention around you, you may have missed all of the crazy diet foods that seem to have come out of nowhere. Many of these foods have become popular over the past several years, but they appear to be popping up all over the place recently. One of those foods that is really popular for cutting down on your calorie intake is cauliflower.

Cauliflower has always been a vegetable that is found in vegetable trays, or sometimes in a salad. It was uncommon to find it in many other places in the past. These days, you can find cauliflower substitutes for a lot of foods that are generally high in carbs or starch. There are so many crazy cauliflower recipes, including things such as macaroni and cheese and spicy wing flavored cauliflower. Next time you're in the store, walk down the frozen vegetable aisle and see how many different foods they have that are anchored by cauliflower.

One of the primary reasons that cauliflower is so popular in recipes is because it is low calorie and has a pretty bland flavor on it’s own. You can substitute cauliflower in for many different foods and not have a huge overpowering flavor that will completely ruin a dish. That’s not to say that you can’t tell that you’re using cauliflower, but it’s pretty easy to get used to whereas another vegetable would simply be too overpowering.

While spicy wing cauliflower is quite tasty, it’s extremely high in calories as the sauce that they put on that stuff is completely loaded with calories. While you may be saving a few calories, you’re losing out on a bunch of protein. Furthermore, a lot of kids won’t like the spiciness of the flavored cauliflower. We’d recommend you skip it in general, although it doesn’t hurt to give it a try if you want to.

Perhaps our favorite way that cauliflower is sold is in the riced variety. Riced cauliflower is exactly what it’s called - it’s cauliflower that has been shredded to look like rice. Rice is already a bland food, so cauliflower works well in that regard. However, the flavor and texture won’t be exactly the same. It’s going to take a little bit of time to get used to, but it’s not too bad. If you’re looking for a way to cut your calories or to get your kids to eat some more vegetables, then riced cauliflower is a perfect choice.

In terms of calories, this is one of the ultimate substitutes in your meals. One cup of cooked white rice has just over 200 calories in it. One cup of riced cauliflower has 25 calories in it. That’s right, you can eat 8 cups of riced cauliflower for every one cup of regular rice that you normally eat. That’s an insane amount of food for the calories you’re getting. There’s almost no chance you’ll be eating 8 cups of riced cauliflower in one meal. Ultimately, riced cauliflower is a great way to cut your calories way down.

Add to that fact that this is actually a vegetable. If your kids are really against eating vegetables, you may be able to sneak some of this into their regular meals. You might look at mixing regular rice with riced cauliflower so that your kids are less able to notice the difference. You can also simply put it to the side of another food that you wouldn’t normally have rice with, but that your kids might eat it with.

Riced cauliflower is easily one of our favorite foods in our home. It allows us to not overeat, while at the same time feeling full. We don’t want to eat more, while at the same time being able to eat some really delicious meals. We’ll post a couple of our favorite recipes in the future.