Cauliflower Rice......Believe the Hype

Well, you definitely did not hear it here FIRST, but you can say that you heard it here......eventually. It has been blogged about, posted to FB, tweeted, Pinned, and Instagrammed in countless Paleo recipes. "It will never fill them up", I said. "It will take too long to make", I said. "I'm too lazy to make that," I said. Actually, that last one was true..

 So I am a little late to the cauliflower-rice party, but now I'm all dolled up and ready to dance.

 Oh.My.Gosh. I was so wrong! We may never go back to rice! I am an idiot. What the heck is my problem? This was so freakin' easy to make, and it was delicious.
Oh- and you know how brown rice has to cook for like.....oh, I don't know....10 days? This was an absolute snap to make from the chopping to the bowl.

  And guess what? 

I have a confession: I don't have a food processor. Your gasp was audible.

I know, right? What am I even DOING in the kitchen?? (I'm such a poser.) In fact, when the Food Network finally calls me and begs me to do a show, that is what we will call it. Posers Kitchen.
But I digress.

 I made this WITHOUT the food processor. It took a few more minutes to chop, but the cauliflower lends itself to crumbling pretty readily, and after just a few minutes of constant chopping, I was using my Julia Child voice, and feeling quite pleased with how funny I am. My husband is so lucky. Good times, here in my kitchen. Good times. 

But if you have a food processor, or if you want to buy ME a food processor, this dish would take , like, 2 seconds. Maybe longer, but you get my drift. 

So, my cauliflower rice didn't win any visual awards because as much as I chopped it, it still resembled a kind of lumpier rice. But that didn't affect the flavor at all. Even the rice-lovers in this house really loved it and to my surprise, these man-children were not prowling about ravenously later in the evening. Win-WIn. Next time I will remember to take a picture.

 I will definitely be making this again. And again. And I will probably try to be legit and buy myself a food processor. Ooooo look at me,.... miss fancy pants in the kitchen.

 So, what we have learned here today,(and I am summarizing) is that imitating the voice of a famous chef, makes the chopping more fun and makes you feel better about yourself. And that sometimes peer pressure is good and you should just cave and make the damned stuff everyone is raving about. You can thank me later.

So, here is the recipe from Nom Nom Paleo for the cauliflower rice. And below is the super-easy recipe for how we made our Mexican Chicken Bowls, using it.

Crockpot Mexican Chicken Bowls

Enough boneless chicken thighs to feed our family (rinsed and trimmed of excess fat).

1/2 jar of your favorite organic salsa (to make it easy, I use a spicy one and I don't add any other seasonings)

Roasted green chili peppers, chopped.

1-2 Tomatoes-chopped

1-2 Avocado-cubed

1 large Onions-chopped

Shredded sharp Cheddar Cheese

Rinse and trim the chicken, and place in crockpot.

Add 1/2 jar of salsa

Literally, you could just about any other vegetables and seasonings into the crock pot that you wanted to at this point.

Close lid and cook about 6 hours on high, or until the chicken easily shreds

Make Cauliflower rice (This can be easily re-heated, so it doesn't really matter when you make it.)

In each bowl, place cauliflower rice, then top with the shredded chicken. 

Add chopped tomatoes, onions, avocado and a TBS of shredded cheddar cheese if you desire.

And lastly, here is a picture of where I ran yesterday. It has nothing to do with this post, but I think a blog post looks sad without a picture.

Just Keep Going!

~Melissa