Cauliflower rice is basically grated or blended cauliflower depending on your process. It is a wonderful substitute for white rice with a lot more nutrition and a lot less calories and carbs. There are 25 calories and 5 g of carbs. per cup of raw or cooked cauliflower rice compared to 200 calories and 41 g of carbs. in a cup of cooked white rice. This rice substitute is becoming so mainstream that it can be found frozen in grocery stores. However, it is a lot less expensive and a lot less mushy when you make your own.
You can make your vegetable rice either by hand or with a food processor.
Tips on how to make cauliflower rice.
By hand.
Use a box grater with the coarse grate to grate your cauliflower head. Just remove the green leaves from the cauliflower, but do not separate the florets. Grating the whole head gives you more surface area to work with so that you won't grate your skin on the grater! Trust me, I've done that.
By food processor.
When using a food processor, you have 3 options to make cauliflower rice, depending on your application. You can either grate your cauliflower with the french-fry cut or julienne disc for larger pieces that resemble rice, a coarse grate for smaller pieces or the metal blade that will render finer pieces depending on how much it is processed.
Different cauliflower rice cuts
Coarse grate.
When using the coarse grate, you do not have to cut and separate the stems from the florets. Simply place your cauliflower in the food processor and grate. This may seem simpler, but the results are different. See video.
Make cauliflower rice with a grater attachment.
Metal blade.
When using the metal blade, a few adjustments need to be made to avoid cutting your cauliflower rice too finely thus making tiny, mushy granules. First, hand cut and separate the florets from the stems and then process them in separate, small batches. Only use the "pulse" button to keep the integrity of the cauliflower. Don't wait until all the pieces have been cut as this may result in a puree. It is better to stop when most of the cauliflower reaches the desired consistency and pick up the large pieces for processing during the next batch. I find that using the blade is the best attachment for a flour substitution for no carb quiches.
Size of cauliflower piece processed with blade. Longer processing (right) results in a mushy, granular consistency. Pulsing in small batches results in separate grains (left),
Let me know how yours turns out in the comment section.