What's Cooking: Cauliflower Breadsticks
Cauliflower mashed potatoes, cauliflower rice, and now cauliflower breadsticks! We've all been there, so desperate to find a way to cut carbs. We stumble across a recipe that promises to taste just like the real thing and well most the time it's disappointing. While nothing will every truly replace creamy mashed potatoes, delicious starch filled noodles, or soft sour dough bread there are some good recipes out there.
But that is just it- if you go in expecting it to taste just like the real thing you will be left disappointed. I decided to cook my way through a recipe for cauliflower breadsticks I found on RealHouseMoms and here is what I found.
My first attempt at making these, well, didn't turn out quite the best. They came out of the oven looking so promising, but after cutting the "bread" into sticks I found it was very wet and moist. I went to pick up my first bread stick to try and it crumbled in half. It was like a soggy loaf of left over bread. Whomp Whomp! However despite the crumbling of my breadsticks I did like the combinations of flavors and satisfaction of cheesy goodness so I was determined to make it work and heres what I changed.
The recipe has you rice the cauliflower and immediately mix it with the remainder of ingredients, but they are missing one small but powerful step. When you cook cauliflower it omits a lot of water and gets soggy, which is why the bread came out soggy as the oven proved as an initial cooking process releasing that water. When instead the directions should tell you that after ricing the cauliflower, steam it in the microwave to release that water. Then using a fine cloth, pour the steamed cauliflower on it and squeeze out the excess moisture. This leaves you with dry cauliflower that can be a solid base for your bread. When you bake it in the oven it will solidify and hold the sticks together better for you to enjoy! If you still experience moisture simply bake them for longer or even broil them, just make sure you keep an eye on them so they don't burn!
I would also like to say this recipe does have a very overwhelming garlic taste, now I am a huge fan of garlic so I loved every bite of it, but those of you who are a little less fond of the potent substance may wish to use a little less than the recipe calls for. Another quick tip to make this recipe even easier is to buy Green Giant Riced Cauliflower. It already comes riced up and is even steam-able right within the bag. It saves a lot of time and effort when you're in a hurry. Just remember, nothing is ever going to taste as good as bread, but I do believe this is a tasty low carb alternative.
And there you have it! StephsApron: cooking my way through cauliflower breadsticks!
Find the full recipe for the cauliflower breadsticks here.
