I had a craving for nachos that I managed to turn into a bonafide vegetarian recipe. (Just reminding everyone out there that you don’t need to be a vegetarian to enjoy a vegetarian meal.) Break out of your comfort zone and try this one…

First we are going to make the buffalo cauliflower. I’ve chopped up a half a head of cauliflower into smaller than bite-size pieces. In the big bowl I have flour, corn starch, water, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and garlic powder. Now it’s just a matter of combining the two!

These will go in the oven for about 20 minutes to cook through. Point of self-criticism: make sure there is enough physical separation between each cauliflower piece because some of mine stuck together when the batter pooled. (See bottom right corner.)

When they come out of the oven, take a basting brush and coat one side with buffalo (or some other) hot sauce. I missed taking a picture when I took them out of the oven 😦

Next we are going to prepare our other nacho ingredients.

In this pic I have tomatoes, red and yellow peppers, lettuce, zucchini, celery, jalapenos, lime, cilantro, and avocado. (Not shown: red onion, sour cream, and mozzarella.)

We are going to take our peppers, celery, and red onion and give those a quick fry on the stove top. This will be one of our nacho toppings.

Now you can start building your nachos on your baking sheet. I like to line my sheet pans with either parchment paper, or a silicone baking mat. It makes for easy clean up!

On top of our nachos, we will add our fried pepper mixture, shredded mozzarella, fresh sliced jalapenos, and the buffalo cauliflower. Pop that in the oven for ~10 minutes until your cheese is just starting to brown on the outer edges of your pan.

While my nachos were in the oven, I whipped together a quick guacamole and some sour cream and lime crema.

Here is the finished product. I served the nachos in the pan (mostly for lazy purposes), and topped it off with chopped lettuce, zucchini, and tomato, the guac, a few slices of lime, and a good helping of my crema. It was really tasty and you almost couldn’t tell you were eating cauliflower on your nachos. Also the cauliflower turned out super spicy, which should mean a lot coming from me because I love spicy food.

I hope you try something new and adventurous in your home food projects! As I always say (for the past 5-ish weeks), we have nothing but time…