Baked Cauliflower Casserole

Kind of like a double baked potato but with cauliflower and not baked twice, so you know…exactly the same.

This Baked Cauliflower Casserole would be a perfect side dish for a group gathering. The first that comes to mind is the upcoming Turkey Day. Add this dish to your Paleo Thanksgiving menu at the end of the month or serve it as the main dish for Tuesday night’s dinner and remove the bacon to make it vegetarian friendly.

A few months back I saw a recipe for Twice Baked Cauliflower fly past my Facebook feed when a friend shared the recipe on his wife’s wall, and it looked interesting, so I clicked through. The person on Facebook linked back to her source so of course I had to read the entire post. Man did I have a laugh.

Now I don’t know much about the South Beach diet but from reading her post I got the sense that she is deathly afraid of fat.

WARNING: Fat doesn’t make you fat.

So here are the changes the woman made. She removed the butter from the recipe altogether, used low fat cheddar cheese, low fat sour cream, low fat cream cheese and reduced the amount of bacon from the original recipe. Not only did she remove the two pieces of bacon the original recipe called for, she used pre-cooked bacon from Costco…which I don’t imagine is properly sourced, quality bacon. ;)

Anything that’s packaged and is labeled pre-cooked sounds extremely healthy, right? ;)

All I could think after reading the entire article was, what a train wreck! I’m sure she thought she was making a healthy meal but that cauliflower wasn’t healthy any longer, filled with all that manufactured crap and low fat substitutions.

I’m sure her recipe for Double Baked Cauliflower tastes great, in fact I have no doubt it does but knowing that 26K+ people are following her page on Facebook alone is enough to realize how much the general public is being misled about what constitutes as healthy eating. If only those 26K+ people were privy to articles like this one by Diane Sanfilippo titled FAQ: What Are Safe Cooking Fats & Oils? For a quick guide on healthy cooking fats I’ve included her Cooking Fats guide from Practical Paleo below. Safe cooking folks and keep your friends and family informed.

Yield: 8 cups

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
6 slices bacon
1/2 tablespoon dried chervil
1/2 tablespoon coarse ground sea salt
coarse ground black pepper, to taste
1/3 cup full-fat canned organic coconut milk
5 green onions, sliced

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Add cauliflower, onion and garlic to a large pot filled with water. Bring to a boil over medium high heat until cauliflower is tender.
While cauliflower is going fry up 6 slices of bacon in a frying pan over medium heat. When done transfer between two paper towels, set aside.
Drain well (watch not to burn yourself on the steam) and mash the cauliflower, onion and garlic with a potato masher in the same pot. I left some cauliflower chunks to add some texture.
Add chervil, sea salt, black pepper, coconut milk and 4 slices of bacon, broken into bite size pieces, to the cauliflower mash and stir to combine well.
Pour the mixture into an 8x8 glass baking dish (or whatever size smaller baking dish you may own). Top with remaining 2 slices of bacon, broken into bite size pieces, and sliced green onion.
Bake uncovered for 30-35 minutes, until bubbling and starting to brown on top.
Let cool for 5 minutes and serve.
Enjoy! :)

Baked Cauliflower Casserole