Whole Roasted Cauliflower

You should always be skeptical of recipes claiming to be amazingly delicious with only five ingredients, I feel. (You should also be skeptical of all sentences that include hyperbolic adverbs such as “amazingly.”)

And yet, here I am telling you that this five-ingredient recipe (though it’s actually 6 if you include the water and use a spice blend instead of individual spices) from The Minimalist Baker was as claimed: “The Best Whole Roasted Cauliflower” (that I’ve ever made. Is it actually “the best” ever? Who’s to say? No one has eaten all the cauliflower ever made by every person in the entire world over the course of the history of the roasted cauliflower. Thus, this one’s pretty darn good.

What I like about it:

1. You don’t need to brine or marinate the cauliflower for ages.
2. You don’t need to waste a bottle or half a bottle of wine.
3. The cauliflower ends up with a crispy outside instead of a sort-of-browned, mostly steamed and soft one. But the whole cauliflower will still be tender (I barbecued a whole cauliflower once and it was fibrous and tough from the dry heat.)
4. It doesn’t require heaps of animal fat or oil. I mean, if you’re going to write a recipe for a whole roast cauliflower, think about your audience. Sure, lots of carnivores might be interested, but you’re losing your whole vegetarian audience by slathering it in duck fat, which, let’s be honest, won’t make a heck of a lot of difference when there’s a bunch of spices involved.
5. You can throw in whatever other vegetables you want in the bottom of the dish and hose will soak up the marinade that drips down from the cauliflower (e.g. Brussels sprouts, as photographed above).

The genius in this recipe lies in the pan of water set below your dish of cauliflower in the oven, which steams the cauliflower while still allowing the top to brown. and if it doesn’t brown quite enough, the cauliflower is already high enough in the oven that you can just turn on the broiler and a couple minutes later you’re good to go. Plus, the parts underneath are soft and juicy, so you can either eat them as they are, or put the shaved dish (because you obviously shaved off the crunchy outside layer first, like shawarma, or vegan shawarma) back under the broiler to crisp the next layer.

You can also use whatever spice blend you want, so long as you’ve got enough salt in there + something to coat the whole cauliflower (e.g. sweet paprika made into a paste or harissa as called for in the recipe).

So, thank you, Minimalist Baker, for the amazingly wonderful recipe.