Caulipower pizzas and flours
I first became aware of the shape-shifting abilities of cauliflower while practicing Dr. Ludwig’s Always Hungry? diet. His Shepherd’s Pie uses cooked cauliflower puréed with cannellini beans as an excellent substitute for mashed potatoes. Cauliflower is a non-starchy vegetable, making it appropriate for a low carb/keto diet, it fights cancer and is full of useful phytochemicals, and of course it contains no gluten. With all these benefits, cauliflower is finding its way into a variety of packaged foods which are now hitting the shelves and other new ones on display at the recent Summer Fancy Food Show 2018.
The most popular use of cauliflower seems to be pizza and crackery snacks, where it provides some of the bulk replacing wheat flour.
Outer Aisle Cauliflower Pizza Crusts
Caulipower is the most established brand. You’re very likely to find their pizzas in multiple flavors in the frozen foods section of your grocery. They also make pizza crusts (including a paleo grain-free version) and packaged baking mixes that can be substituted one-for-one for regular flour. The standard mix includes cassava and rice flours and is notably lower in calories and carbs that standard gluten free mixes. The paleo substitutes almond flour for the rice flour. I tried the pizza and it was fine… like good frozen pizza.
Then there is Outer Aisle which crafts a “pizza crust” out of nothing but cauliflower, parmesan cheese, eggs and nutritional yeast. These are more like wraps or tortillas, thin and scaled to individual servings. A carb-averse tester liked the taste but said she would balk at paying the retail price of $6.99 for 2 pieces. Unlike the other pizza items, they’re found in the cold case with deli items.
From The Ground Up cauliflower snacks
From the Ground Up offers cauliflower snacks—pretzels and crackers. The pretzels add cassava flour while the crackers include rice and potato flours. I tried the pretzels and liked them—the sourness of cauliflower was noticeable in good way and was a nice contrast to the salt. These are gluten free and vegan, but not low carb.
Live Glean sells Cauliflower Goodness Flour & Powder which is pure ground cauliflower, for baking. Their website suggests (without a specific commitment) that they’re making use of leftover crops, which is a good thing. The Cauliflower Flour is not yet on their website but recipes for other vegetable powders suggest they need to be mixed with other flours (like almond) for baking.
Kitchen & Love Cauliflower Lunch Packs
A second major category is cauliflower rice: if you coarsely grate or finely chop cauliflower florets you end up with something that looks like rice. Path of Life has a premade cauliflower fried rice. Kitchen and Love has cauliflower quick meals where the cauliflower rice is mixed with savory spices and mix-ins; Peruvian Vegetable Ceviche, Moroccan Vegetable Harissa and Indian Vegetable Curry varieties available. You can also buy preshredded cauliflower rice in the freezer case at many stores, though I would hope you would take the few minutes to prepare it at home with a box grater.
Peekaboo makes ice cream with hidden vegetables, including Chocolate with Hidden Cauliflower. I missed this one; the Washington Post correspondent at the show said it tastes like regular chocolate ice cream. This doesn’t seem to be available locally at this point; you can buy a pint mail order but the cheapest shipping charge is $88 for overnight priority.
We also did some testing of cauliflower preps in our own kitchen. We’ll talk about those in our next post.
