Two Simple Techniques That Bring Out the Best in Cauliflower (Published 2016) (2024)

Winter isn’t coming, it’s going, but the supermarkets are still loaded with cauliflower, and that’s a depressing prospect. Some people love this albino broccoli, other people hate it, but no one thinks it’s very exciting.

The cauliflower dish at my restaurant, Dirt Candy, requires a lot of work to wring excitement out of the produce equivalent of Muzak. At home, the rare times I cook it, I do what everyone else does: I roast it. And after a few months of roasted cauliflower, I’m dying for something different.

Dumping cauliflower florets in a mixture of salt and lemon juice for 45 minutes to an hour turns them into spiky little flavor bombs, delivering high-pitched squeaks in salads, sandwiches or the stew recipe here.

Grilling cauliflower and giving it plenty of char delivers a low bass note that adds an extra dimension of flavor. Mashed cauliflower is bland, but replace half your cauliflower with grilled cauliflower before mashing, and suddenly the dish has a smoky depth. Or, use it in this cauliflower stew for an unexpected roundness.

Making a stew hearty usually requires long simmers or starting with a roux. While those techniques are great for bringing out the best in meat stews, a late-season vegetable stew should taste as if it’s tumbling toward spring, alive with fresher, brighter, punchier flavors.

This recipe delivers that heartiness by taking out half the soup, blending it and putting it back in the pot. And while cauliflower stew sounds pretty monotone, adding pickled and grilled cauliflower gives it the high and low notes you need to make it sing.

Recipe: Charred Cauliflower Stew