Parmesan Mashed Potatoes (and Cauliflower!)
2 colors (but sometimes food is just beige 😆…)THE WHY BEHIND THIS RECIPE
This recipe was originally featured in a 2024 Holiday Menu collaboration with my dear friend and professional retreat chef Ali Rose. The full PDF Holiday menu can be found here.
This is my Cooking in Color take on the comfort food of mashed potatoes. If you don’t tell anyone, I don’t think anyone will even notice there is a whole head of cauliflower in the dish! It’s still so fluffy, creamy, and comforting. By incorporating cauliflower, the dish becomes higher in fiber and lower on the glycemic index, making it more blood sugar friendly.
Another fun fact: preparing this dish a day in advance and reheating it offers an added bonus (besides saving you time day of) in the name of resistant starch. Resistant starch is a type of carbohydrate that resists digestion, feeds beneficial gut bacteria and improves blood sugar control. If you want to learn more about resistant starch, I highly recommend this article! I’ve done some experiments on my CGM and can confirm that eating the exact same potato dish on day 2 after cooling and reheating it has led to less of a spike of blood sugar (N=me). When I tested this dish specifically, I had no rise on my CGM - but I did pair it with the lamb and brussels for a balanced meal, and for balanced blood sugar!
Yields: 6-8 servings
Total time: 60 minutes
WHAT YOU NEED
TOOLS
Not needed but fun: garlic bulb baker
INGREDIENTS
1 bulb of garlic, roasted
1.5-2lbs of potatoes - which is a bag of mini baby potatoes or about 5-6 medium potatoes, cut into chunks (in my opinion, no need to peel but that’s personal preference)
1 cauliflower head, broken into florets
1 ¼ cup parmesan, grated
4-6 tablespoons butter or ⅓ cup milk of choice
Kosher salt & pepper to taste, probably about 1 tbsp salt
Reserve some starchy potato water
2 sprigs of rosemary, roughly chopped
½ cup parsley, chopped
Flakey sea salt, for finishing
HOW TO DO IT
Roast the whole garlic bulb for 60 minutes at 350° F. Slice the top of the garlic bulb off and add 1-2 tbsp of olive oil so the bulb does not dry out.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the potato chunks and cook for 10 minutes. Then add the cauliflower florets to the same pot and cook both together for another 10-12 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork.
Note: If your pot is not large enough, you can either do this in two pots, or cook the potatoes first and let them cool and then cook the cauliflower.
Reserve 1 cup of the starchy water before straining the potatoes.
First, add cauliflower to the food processor with the roasted garlic, butter or milk, 1 cup of the parmesan and a heavy pinch of salt (about 2 tsp). Blend until smooth. Transfer to a bowl.
For the potatoes, you can either hand mash those in the pot or transfer them to the food processor. If you use the food processor, add ¼ cup of the starchy potato water (or you can use milk or veggie or bone broth) and pulse gently just a few times. You don’t want to blend the potatoes on high or they will get gummy or gluey (this is because the starch in them gets overworked).
Combine the mashed potatoes and the mashed cauliflower together.
Make a little green gremolata topping: Finely chop rosemary and parsley and combine with the remaining ¼ cup parmesan and 1 tsp flaky sea salt. Sprinkle on top of the mashed potatoes right before serving.
SWAPS, TIPS & TRICKS
Green gremolata to zhuzh it up: You can use any herbs you have on hand like chives, oregano, thyme etc. I just like rosemary and parsley best here!
Potatoes: I find a yellow potato or yukon potato works best here, but any potato will do!
Don’t over blend the potatoes: If you do your potatoes in the food processor, be careful not to over blend them or they will get gummy or gluey due to the starch in the potatoes being overworked. I like to pulse them just a few times in the food processor or just mash them by hand (bonus arm workout!).
Nutritional Info
Per serving, makes 6-8 servings
Calories: 224
Carbohydrates: 22g
Fiber: 4g
Net carbs: 18g
Protein: 8g
Fat: 11g
Sodium: 1184mg
Sugar: 1g
