Eating Cauliflower Rice as a substitute for rice or mashed potatoes always sounds like such a drag. I do it, like many others, when I'm trying to diet. Except I find it so unenjoyable, un-filling and while it provides great volume if you're counting macros or calories, it's so...bland. This has been my impression for quite some time until I recently discovered a few extra ingredients that can completely transform Cauliflower Mash. Hear me out.
The simple addition of boiled celery root (it's literally a root in the vegetable section and very ugly looking) makes the "mash" light, airy and has this extra something that I can't quite put my finger on it. I promise you, these will be the best faux-tatoes you've ever had.
Back in the day when restaurants were open, which feels like forever ago, one of my husband and I's favorite restaurants to go to in our little western suburb of Chicago is called Niche. After living in the city for 7 years, you get used to a certain level of cooking that the restaurants provide. Out here, it's tough to find good comparisons to some of the places in the city. Niche however has yet to disappoint. Their chef takes fresh, in-season ingredients and makes incredibly delicious and complicated dishes. This is where I was first introduced to celery root in the form of a puree. After eating there, I immediately set out trying to figure out how I could incorporate this ingredient into my cooking.
Turns out adding it into cauliflower for a low-carb, starchy wannabe side is the answer! A few simple ingredients completely transforms a vegetable I refused to touch until the past 10 years.
And PS, you don't need to buy overpriced Cauliflower Rice for this, just buy a simple $1 head of Cauliflower, a few knobs of Celery Root and you're in business. I heated up a large pan of water with a touch of salt and added in the florets from my Cauliflower and cut off the outsides of the celery root. You can use a potato peeler for this but I find it time consuming and it was much easier to just cut off the sides, kind of like shaving an apple with a knife. I threw that in the pot too.
Once both are cooked until fork-tender (stab the celery root with a fork, does it go in? Great, it's done), drain in a colander and throw it into a blender. Or a food processor, but to be honest, food processors take up so much precious space in our dishwasher that is already ran too many times per day.
From here I added some salt, some chicken stock, two little wedges of Lite Laughing Co Cream Cheese and a bit of Parmesan. Hit blend! I had stop and push the mixture down a few times to ensure it was all blended well and should note I used our Vitamix which is very high-powered. If you don't have a high-powered blender, you can use a good old fashioned potato masher or the food processor, although I find that the spinning motion gets more air into the vegetables and makes it fluffier. You're done. That's it. It stores great in the fridge and I've been eating it alongside roasted chicken and green beans for lunch all week.
Just make sure before you blend that you remove the top little plastic piece of the blender so that the escaping steam can come out. This will ensure you do not get burned! Very important!!
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