Jamie's Diet Food: Fun with Cauliflower

You guys. Cauliflower is amazing.

If I had to choose between giving up cheese or giving up cauliflower, I might actually choose cauliflower over cheese (but I would still eat this).

If you are eating for weight loss or paleo or low-carb, you should already know about cauliflower rice and mashed cauliflower. You should also have a kick-ass roasted cauliflower recipe (or seven). But you may not ever have made cauliflower tater tots.

Notice that these are cheesy cauliflower tots, so you can tell that I didn't trade cauliflower for cheese. I didn't have to. You can't make me.

Cheesy Baked Cauliflower Tots

Ingredients: 1 large head cauliflower
1 cup cheese (I like cheddar, use low-fat if you must)
2 tbsp almond flour
Salt and pepper to taste
Paprika to taste
1 egg (beaten)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400 F.  Spray a mini muffin pan with non-stick spray.

Boil cauliflower until tender or zap in the microwave (takes about 2 minutes, covered). Drain.

Use a food processor (I have this one) to coarsely chop the cauliflower. It should look like big crumbs. If you go too far with it, you end up with mashed cauliflower. Which isn't the end of the world, but you're not going to be eating cheesy tots tonight. Put in a fine sieve or a colander lined with cheese cloth and press out some more water.

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. No spoon needed. Just use your hands.

Use a tablespoon measuring spoon to scoop the mixture and into the muffin tin. If you don't have a mini muffin tin, just make tot-shaped lumps with your hands and put them on a normal baking sheet.

Bake 15 minutes, or until the tots start to brown. Carefully turn each cauliflower tot over bake 15 minutes more, until tots are browned on both sides. Serve hot; these are best right out of the oven.

Thanks to Kalyn's Kitchen for the idea. Her recipe is lower-calorie, so you might want to check it out, as well.