Pan Fried Salmon over Riced Cauliflower
Cauliflower rice. I went there. Might as well after the cauliflower “pizza crust” or mashed cauliflower.
Fake foods or substitutions are weird. Those fake veggie chick’n nugget things? Weird. Let’s just eat chicken or lets just eat veggies, not some weird mash-up. The “cheez” sauce that really has no cheese in it but some sort of nutritional yeast? Yeah, that’s not cheese, not even close. Wrapping lettuce around a burger? Bizarre. Turning cauliflower into rice? I still had to try it.
It’s basically sautéed cauliflower in a really small shape. How quaint! I actually liked this. It’s still nothing like rice other than the size. It would be a decent base for a curry, a stuffed pepper, or maybe even some red beans and rice. I’m not going to sub it for a risotto anytime soon. Mostly I liked having cauliflower in a uniform size. It’s so much easier to eat.
I cooked up a huge pile of it, sprinkled a ton of seasoning on it, and laid a salmon filet on top. I hadn’t had salmon in forever. It was just what I needed. If you do make up the cauliflower, make sure you use it in a day or two. The leftovers in my fridge smelled so, so bad.
Ingredients
- 6oz salmon filet
- 1 hear of cauliflower
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 teaspoons of ground coriander
- salt
- pepper
- cajun seasoning
- cilantro
Preparation
Heat the olive oil a large sauté pan on medium high heat. Add the diced onion, stirring occasionally, while they soften and brown. This should take 5-7 minutes.
Cut the cauliflower up into smaller pieces. Put the pieces into a food processor and pulse until it breaks down into a small uniform rice-like size. You may have to push things around inside to get all of the pieces. Add the cauliflower to the onions and stir to coat in the oil, mixing in the onion. After 2-3 minutes, season with the coriander, salt, and pepper. It should take another 5 minutes depending on how much cauliflower you have. It’ll soften and brown just like the onion.
While the cauliflower finishes up, heat a cast iron pan on medium-high heat. Let it get really hot before adding a little bit of oil. Season the salmon with salt, pepper, and cajun seasoning. Place it skin-side up in the pan. Let it cook for 4-5 minutes until the flesh is browned. Flip the fish skin-side down. Cook it for another 3-4 minutes until the skin is crispy. Serve the fish over half of the cauliflower mixture. Sprinkle with cilantro.
I could not agree more with the fake food thing! It’s just disappointing. The “cheeze” sauce? No. I’ve tried it so many times and different ways, but it just doesn’t work unless you’re willing to call it something else and think of it as something else. Fake meat makes me feel weird. Simple as that! I looooove anything cauliflower though! It just works!
Exactly!! Is it a nice, nutritional yeast sauce? SURE! Cheese it is not.
I actually found that it was pretty good as a spicy queso-type dip. But that’s mostly because it’s gooey and super spicy. Still good, though! That’s the only time when I think it could be considered in the realm of cheese.
I hear ya. After all the never ending hype, I’ve tried (oh, I forget how many times) to make cauliflower pizza taste like anything except weird overcooked veg. It’s not possible. It’s just odd, odd, odd. I do think that “riced” cauliflower does make an interesting change up in stuffed peppers, though. And, you put yours on salmon… anything’s better with salmon :).
Agreed — salmon is pretty awesome!
Yeah, food substitution things are just weird. That being said, my paleo friend made a cauliflower crust pizza, and it was pretty awesome (it had a lot of cheese in it, can’t really go wrong there). I think I’d like this, so long as I’d have juices to soak into all of the “rice”… and if I were able to eat it fresh (sorry to hear about the leftovers).
Did they actually get it to be crispy like a crust? When I made mine, it had to be eaten with a fork. It still tasted awesome, but just wasn’t a good substitute.
I think the edges got a little cripsy, but yeah, we still ate ours with a fork. Haha not really a “crust” but enjoyable nonetheless.
I agree–fake food is definitely weird. (I say this with a package of fake chicken patties in my freezer, however. Sometimes you need emergency food, even if it’s fake.) I’ve never done cauliflower rice before, but it sounds like it would be pretty great all spiced up!
That weird food sub thing has ALWAYS been my beef with vegan “cheese.” Just eat cheese, or don’t eat cheese, don’t try to convince me some plasticky sheet of non-food is anything remotely like “cheese.”
That said, I love tiny crumbles of cauliflower. Or “rice,” as some might say.
Cheese has to be the worst, even compared to the meat substitutes. Just don’t.
Yeah,. at least the fake meats can taste okay/be delightfully salty. Fake cheese? Absolutely nothing going for it.