Cauliflower Bites
Crispy, savoury and delicious! Serve these spiced cauliflower bites as a starter, as a snack or as an accompaniment to any main dish.
I just had some bajji dry mix leftover after the Deepavali party and didn’t know how to use it. I’d stored it in the refrigerator and completely forgotten about it. This weekend when I was doing some spring cleaning in the kitchen this dry bajji mixture caught my attention. So I mixed that with some additional ingredients to make Cauliflower Bites! It felt so nice to have something to munch on, without those extra calories from a deep fried dish.
In fact you can mix all the dry ingredients (other than mustard seeds and urad dhal) in this recipe and store it in the refrigerator. Whenever you want to make these cauliflower bites, it just takes less than half an hour if you already have the dry batter mixture ready.
Ingredients
Cauliflower – 600 gms
Curry Leaves – a few
Sugar (or jaggery) – 1 tsp
Salt – 1 1/4 tsp (or to taste)
Turmeric powder – 1 tsp
Red chilly powder – 2 tsp (or to taste)
Asafoetida (hing) – 1/2 tsp
Chickpea flour (Besan) – 3 to 4 tbsp
Rice flour – 3 to 4 tbsp
Cornflour – 1 tbsp (optional)
Oil – 4 tbsp
Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
Urad dhal – 2 tsp
Yield
~ serves 4 to 5
Prep time
30 mins
Cook time
25 mins
Method
1) Blanch cauliflower and seperate the florets into bite sized pieces. Keep this in a wide bowl and refrigerate for 15 mins.
2) In a smaller bowl take cornflour, rice flour, chickpea flour, salt, sugar, turmeric powder, red chilly powder and hing. Mix well.
3) Add this dry mixture to the refrigerated cauliflower florets and mix thoroughly. Set aside for 5 mins.
4) Medium heat a wide pan/kadai and add oil. When slightly heated add mustard seeds and let it splutter. Then add urad dhal and fry until golden.
5) Now add curry leaves and then the cauliflower florets. Mix. Cover the pan for 5 mins until the florets sweat a bit.
6) Now open the pan and reduce the heat to medium-low. Mix once and let the cauliflower bites fry until crisp and golden. Stir once in 2 to 3 mins so that all the sides are roasted and crisp uniformly.
7) When the cauliflower bites are golden and crispy switch off the heat and let the pan sit on the stove for another 10 mins. Toss it once in 3 or 4 mins. This resting time on the warm stove makes the bites crispier without drying out the cauliflower.
8) Cauliflower bites can be served as a starter/accompaniment for any bread/side dish for plain rice or pulao/evening snack with a cup of tea/pack for your kid’s snack box.
Notes
- Don’t forget to refrigerate your blanched cauliflower for 15 mins at least before you coat it with the spiced flour! Two reasons for this – first, it helps to dry the cauliflower out after the blanching. Second, cooling the cauliflower down before pan frying, allows the flour mixture to cook before the cauliflower starts to release moisture. If your cauliflower is at room temperature, it will start to release moisture in the pan relatively quickly and the flour mixture will get soggy.
- Adding cornflour is totally optional. Cornflour helps to make the cauliflower bites slightly crispier and also retains the crispiness for longer. If you are going to serve immediately after making, then cornflour can be avoided.
- After coating these cauliflower florets with dry ingredients it can be stored for nearly 36 hours in the refrigerator.
- Keep the heat at low to medium throughout the roasting time to achieve evenly golden cauliflower bites.
Beginners Tips
- To blanch any vegetable – Boil water in a pan, add some salt and add the vegetable. Let it boil for 2 mins. Immediately drain the vegetable in a colander and wash it with very cold water or add the drained vegetable to ice cold water.
5 Comments
MotherOfNOMS
Hi Sandra,
Thankyou. Happy you’re going to try this simple, tasty cauliflower bites. Hope you like it!
Sandra Ans
As I really love cauliflower, I need to try this recipe!
Thanks for sharing it! Sounds really tasty!
MotherOfNOMS
Hi Dhilip,
Thanks!
Yes, you can use oven to bake these cauliflower bites, but there will be some difference in the crispiness. I would say, bake
in the oven to feel healthy and roast on the kadai when you crave for some fried snack (without actually deep frying). Choose according to your mood 🙂
Dhiip
Nice snack, and healthy too, double win here!!! Question – can I make this in a oven, insteadon the stove? Just get the mustard seeds and urad dhal done on the stove with even less oil, then mix everything in a baking sheet, use the oven to bake everything?? Not sure of the crispiness factor, while maintaining juiciness of the cauliflower using this method. Thoughts?
720p izle
I really enjoy the post. Really looking forward to read more. Great. Frances Ephrem Shamrao