These Shockingly Flavorful Cauliflower Recipes Will Inspire Your Next Meat-Free Meal

Here’s our busy cook’s take on a favorite appetizer, baked instead of fried, and with purchased dough instead of homemade. The garam masala gives these a mellow earthiness.

The secret ingredient in this dish, inspired by one served by chef Matthew Dillon at the Corson Building in Seattle, is an easy-to-make Egyptian toasted-nut-and-spice blend called dukkah.

This soup is a real trickster—onions and cauliflower blend into a purée so smooth, you’d swear it included cream. It’s also a good introduction to this vegetable for those who think they can’t stand cauliflower, since its sulfurous flavor is very mild here and no cauliflower is actually visible. But if you do love it, keep the soup a little chunky so you’ll have some florets in your bowl.

Tiny florets of cauliflower mimic rice in this rich, creamy dish. Golden cauliflower adds appealing color, but the recipe works just as well with the white variety. Try it with pan-roasted brussels sprouts.

Cooked sunny side up or over easy, the egg’s yolk becomes a rich sauce for the cauliflower.

In the realm of fermented foods, especially grain- and soybean-based ones, gochujang is one product that has vegetarian chef Erin Alderson’s heart. The balance of sweet, savory, and heat is a winning combination. Perfect for satisfying a craving for something fresh-feeling during the cooler months.

In tropical Vietnam, cauliflower is a prized cool-weather crop that’s typically stir-fried, added to soup, or pickled. Home ovens are uncommon in Vietnam, so few people roast cauliflower. In my California kitchen, however, I coat cauliflower wedges in salty-sweet-spicy seasonings typically reserved for Cantonese-style char siu barbecue pork, and then high-heat roast them. The contours of the wedges caramelize here and there to develop a deep savoriness that evokes the prized edges and corners of char siu pork. Serve this cauliflower as a satisfying main dish or tuck it into bao and bánh mì.

This spicy-crunchy veggie dish is pleasing at a party and also makes a great side dish. It’s adapted from the blog A Couple Cooks.

“Cumin seeds, with their earthy flavors and underlying sweetness, are a slam-dunk match with skin-contact wines,” writes Kate Leahy in Wine Style: Discover the Wines You Will Love Through 50 Simple Recipes. “Adding vinegar-soaked raisins to the cauliflower as it roasts makes this side dish perfect for deeper-hued styles of orange wine, which typically have had longer contact with grape skins and coat your mouth a bit more than light-colored orange wines. Crushed coriander seeds—if you have them handy—bring an amazing orange-blossom aroma to the table, though they are not essential.”

In Mexico, escabeche, or pickle, often refers to the spicy, crisp vegetable pickle you’ll find in most taco bars. It nearly always has cauliflower, jalapeños, onion, and carrots; chef Donnie Masterton adds a few more. He also infuses the pickling liquid with a jolt of turmeric, giving the pickle a subtle earthiness and bright golden glow. It’s delicious with anything fried, cheesy, or salty.

In Naturally, Delicious – 100 Recipes for Healthy Eats that Make You Happy, Danny Seo explains what he loves about this cauliflower dish. “The ‘meatiest’ of vegetables, one of my favorite ways to eat it is to sear it like a steak and drizzle chimichurri sauce on top.”

Put in some time on Sunday and you won’t wind up reaching for that premade Caesar salad at lunch. Take a cue from Portland recipe developer and stylist Alison Wu (wuhaus.com; @alison__wu) and roast chickpeas, veggies, and seeds; throw a pot of quinoa on the stove; and whip up a quick dressing. With these building blocks on hand, making lunch becomes almost a grab and-go affair. Here’s how she assembles a healthy, satisfying, infinitely riff-able salad.

When finely chopped in a food processor, cauliflower takes on the texture of rice and can be flavored in infinite ways. Here, we sauté it with onion, garlic, and turmeric for a light and flavorful side dish that acts like a starch but is actually a vegetable.

Chef Chad Valencia brings Filipino flair to the roasted cauliflower with yogurt combo that’s so popular these days. His sweet, tangy pickled onion and currants are based on a condiment called atchara. The vinegar with the yogurt is inspired by sawsawan dipping sauces.