Cauliflower Tater Tots

Cauliflower tends to make a decent substitute for potatoes in things, so what about making tater tots? This was another genius idea of my friend Rebecca, and she found this recipe from Make the Best of Everything.

Now, in my opinion, cauliflower can look like potatoes and have the texture of potatoes, but when you’re eating it, it still tastes like vegetables. But, when you add in things like cheese and bacon, all of a sudden it starts tasting like junk food! Here’s what we did:

– First make “cauliflower rice”, which I have yet to try on it’s own, but basically it’s just shredded cauliflower that’s sautéed – in our case in bacon grease.

– Then, mix it with eggs and baked potato toppings. We used crumbled bacon, white cheddar, raw jack cheese, scallions, and red onion. I’m not sure if the red onion was a good idea (maybe Rebecca can weigh in?) because I think it stayed crunchy, which kind of messed with the texture. But it wasn’t bad.

– Then make them into little 1-inch scoops on a cookie sheet (which we lined with Rebecca’s reusable parchment paper – what? I have got to find myself one of those!) and bake at 400*f for 20 minutes (which we kind of did, except that they were sharing the oven with the pizza, so part of the time was at 350) and then broil for 2 minutes and then serve!

Confession, which you may already know, but I’m not actually a big potato fan – my comfort starch of choice is white rice (which is one of the reasons I haven’t tried “cauliflower rice” – really??) so tater tots haven’t exactly left a big hole in their absence. But whatever hole they have left, these definitely filled!!