The concept of cauliflower pizza is not a new concept, it has been floating around the internet for a while now but I’ve never actually tried it.
I looked up a couple recipes but decided they had too many ingredients and too many instructions so just winged it.
Ingredients:
A whole head of cauliflower (a large head made two dinner plate sized pizza’s for us)
Crushed Garlic
Pepper
Coriander Flakes
2 Eggs (We could have got away with 1 egg).
Blitz the cauliflower in the food processor until it begins to look like rice (I had to do ours in two batches as there was way too much cauliflower), mix in an egg and whatever seasoning you like. I went with garlic as I wanted something that would give the cauliflower base a lot of flavor as cauliflower can be quiet bland by itself.
Mold into a pizza shape and put on a pizza tray or stone, or just a standard oven tray if that’s all you have. I placed it on top of baking paper just in case it didn’t hold together to make life easier when dishing up.
Place the base in to the oven to cook for 10-15 minutes on around 180C or until the base is starting to brown up and looks as though it will hold together.
Pull out of the oven and pop the toppings of your choice on (make sure you cook the meat first if using a cut that requires to be fully cooked, ie. chicken breast). We used pumpkin & kumara hummus as the sauce (we had some to be used in the fridge), then added a little bit of baby spinach, chicken breast, a bit of feta ( a littl goes a long way!) and some cranberry jelly.
I put mushrooms on the b/f’s one as well, pretty much use any toppings you have in the fridge. Cook for another 10-15 minutes and then pull out of the oven and let stand for a few minutes (this helps the base to stick together better).
Then dig in! You may have to eat it with a knife and fork depending on how well the base bound together and the size of the slices.
After putting the bases in the oven to cook for the first time around I did some research (yes, good work me) and discovered that you should cook the cauliflower first (microwave or boil on the stove) for a few minutes then put in a teatowel and drain all the water out before mixing with the bits and pieces you add into the base and moulding on to your tray.
It appears this removes the moisture and therefore makes the base more pizza like and hold together a lot better. If your time pressed, the method above the picture works perfectly fine just don’t expect to be able to eat it all with your hands.
Next time i’ll try it with the method of squeezing the water out and see how that turns out.
Have you tried cauliflower pizza?
What are your favourite pizza toppings?
I have to say, I’ve been intrigued about using Cauliflower more since I noticed so many recipes and ideas on Pinterest. It sounds like a great potato substitute too – potato bakes etc. I don’t know if I could master the pizza just yet, but I think I should definitely look into it. Once I have a new oven that is. Mine died and I’m still grieving (and too poor to get a new one just yet)! x
Oh no RIP to your oven! We didn’t have one at the last place we were in, the thing I was most looking forward too was having an oven. I thought it would turn out to be a disaster but it actually was really easy! Do give it a try when your back up and running n the oven department 🙂