This is another "wish I’d thought of this sooner" post. If it comes too late for you to use this Thanksgiving, consider it for Christmas.
For hard-core low-carb folks who will keep the discipline even on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas (which is to say, people like me), here’s a way to approximate traditional holiday cuisine a little bit.
Some things like turkey and ham are, of course, no problem as long people don’t mess them up with carb-laden additives.
But how is it possible to get a low-carb equivalent of that holiday favorite, mashed potatoes?
Actually, there’s more than one way. I’ve seen mixes for low-carb equivalents to mashed potatoes, but there’s a very simple way to do it that just uses what you can get in an ordinary grocery store.
Here’s the secret: Make mashed cauliflower instead.
Like potatoes, cauliflower brought to the right temperature gets nice and mushy, so you can then mush them up. It’s also simliar in color to potatoes but–unlike the latter food–it is quite low carb. A 3 oz. serving of it has like 2 grams of digestible carbs and 2 grams of fiber and only 20 calories.
So just get some cauliflower–frozen or fresh–and nuke it until it’s really soft (I just tested a package of fresh cauliflower florettes in a bag and after 7 minutes on high it was quite mushy)–the mush it up with a spoon and you’re ready to go.
Since cauliflower–like potatoes–has a relatively neutral taste (not the same as potatoes, but still pretty bland) it’s really just a flavor vehicle for what you put on it.
So what can you put on it?
Exact same stuff you put on mashed potatoes: milk, butter, gravy, mushrooms, chives, cheese, salt, pepper–none of those are problems from a low-carb perspective (as long as you use low-carb milk or half-and-half or heavy cream and as long as the gravy isn’t loaded with carbs; many commercial gravies aren’t bad carb-wise at all), so have at it!
When I was a boy my mom would do fancy things with mashed potatoes on holidays, like form them into individual, ball-like servings (with a point on top) and brown them in the oven before serving. I haven’t verified that that would work with mashed cauliflower, but I imagine it would, so if your family’s into that kind of thing, you might try it, too.
Good luck with your holiday low-carbing!
This is a tip I’ll try out simply for reducing calories, thanks! (Maybe post back and let us know how it tastes?)
I don’t understand why Dr. Atkins followers don’t ever seem to distinguish between simple/refined carbs and complex carbs, though. Simple sugars are more readily used, and easily converted to fat if unused. They spike blood sugar. Dieting people should watch their sugars (table sugar, anything ending in “-ose”). Complex carbs on the other hand, require much energy expended in order to convert them to fat. You lose calories from them just from this process. They also keep blood sugar stable so you don’t have those hunger swings.
Just asking politely–Why do low-carbers seem to ignore this distinction? Or is there some explanation I haven’t heard?
A couple years ago during the low carb craze I ate at a place that was serving mashed cauliflower instead of the typical starch-on-the-side. They called it “smash.” I was a little hesitant, but it turned out that it tasted even better than the entree! I think they mixed it with sour cream, so that might be why.
Anonymous Poster, I for one don’t ignore the difference between simple and complex carbs. We eat a lot of bean soups and rolled oats in this house. And Dr. Atkins himself certainly emphasized the difference.
Jimmy, thanks for the cauliflower suggestion. Personally I don’t like the stuff (it must be the texture since, as you say, it’s pretty bland otherwise) but my husband loves it. I have a bag of frozen broccoli-cauliflower cuts in the freezer right now; maybe I’ll filch some of ’em out, boil ’em to a mush (I don’t have a microwave; boiling is OK, isn’t it?) and mash ’em in with the potatoes.
And happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
We mix the cauliflower with a bit of sour cream.
Now I definitely want to give this a try!
Annalucia, thanks. I just wonder because I keep hearing about “evil carbs” from Atkins dieters. This is a serious question, not a diss on Atkins dieters 🙂
Looking on low-carb sites and reading low-carb books never answers my questions about why carbs, as a whole, are so evil.
Then I read about how many vegetables they eat in the last phase and I think, “That’s not exactly ‘low carb’ anymore”. They eat at least enough carbs that they shouldn’t be calling them “evil carbs”.
And then I wonder what it is about the diet that keeps them from just eating some muessli and complex carbs like whole grain bagels or cereal, in moderation. I mean if you eat those, you also don’t get blood sugar spikes, and you can actually eat more of them than Atkins allows.
The whole ketosis thing doesn’t seem like a normal state to tolerate, for life. For one thing, your breath will stink even if you don’t realize it and nobody wants to tell you. And then I see people going touting “fiber” like Jimmy when you certainly have to look to artificial methods of extracting such a thing for low-carbers. To me that suggests that if there is a right way of eating that we’ve forgotten about, Atkins ain’t it.
The low-fat, high complex-carbs and moderate protein diet seems to be the best approximation to how our ancestors lived, when things average out. (They ate vegetables, fruits, berries, as well as meat. They typically only ate “low-carb” when meat was the only food they had.)
Confusing!
(Disclaimer: I’m not doubting that low-carb diets actually work, and I know lots of Atkinsers have low cholesterol and are healthy. Please excuse my curiosity and ignorance! My questions aren’t meant to be confrontational!!!)
Jimmy, the photo looks like something out of a 1950 Betty Crocker and that has me in a puzzle. It certainly doesn’t look like standard Bachelor Presentation with the tablecloth and garnish. Where’s the photo from???
Happy
Thanksgiving! Sorry. Shouldn’t post with people talking to me.
Where *all* images on the internet come from: Google Images! (search on “mashed potatoes” and it’s in the first couple of pages)
I saw these in a cookbook once. They were called “faux-tatos” (pronounced fo-tatos), which I thought was a clever and fun to say… 🙂
For low carb potatoes, see http://www.sunfreshofflorida.com. Al little different consistency than what we’re used to, but definitely good for mashed potatoes.
Regarding the post asking about low carb diets… I’m diabetic, type 2. If I don’t want to go on insulin, I have to maintain a low carb diet.
“High load” carbs… foods high in carbs that have simple sugars… are the bane of anyone trying to lose wieght. Such foods cause your system to produce glucose and insulin in abundance, producing fat. It’s counter-intuitive, but eating carbs puts fat on more readily than eating fat does.
Before agriculture, I’m not sure what percentage of our diet consisted of “High load”, primarily starchy foods. I suspect not much.
Combine a typical western diet with a sedentary lifestyle, and there’s no need to wonder about the increase in obesity here.
“Mashed cauliflower.”
Yum . . .
Jimmy, this is your blog. And I totally respect that.
If you’re saying that “mashed cauliflower” is the way to go, then far be it from me to point out in one of your comboxes that the words “mashed and “cauliflower” connotate to me a vision of a concoction that I would never think of putting in my mouth.
Furthermore, I will not point out in one of your combox’s that the words “mashed” and “cauliflower” are not two words that I would normally ever conjoin together in a sentence wherin I am when trying to convey the spirit of the holiday season in terms of gastronomical enjoyments.
Jimmyakin.org is your blog. “Mashed cauliflower” is your way.
You run with that.
Try it with some onion & chive cream cheese! Yum . . .
David C, that’s great!
I’m not a diabetic, so I won’t be doing Atkins. I was at my slimmest when I went “high” complex carb, low-fat. So were members of my family.
Using us non-diabetics as a “sample”, I found out that on a low-fat diet, inactivity was the biggest hurdle to losing weight. Not hunger or sugar spikes. The second biggest factor in not losing weight was misinformation and the idea that they could fill out their pre-stretched stomaches with as much carbs as they wanted to eat, as long as the fat was kept to a minimum. That meant a lot of pigging out on things like Saltines.
What we normal, non-diabetics needed to do was, move around more and eat complex carbs and not pig out.
In my family, anyway. (and I have hypothyroidism.)
I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. I’m a big fan of mashed potatoes, but I can see how mashed cauliflower, if seasoned correctly, could very nicely mimic the real thing. Great idea!
A little potato goes a long way.
I take about a 1/4 of a medium baked potato and add butter, cream cheese, sour cream and mozzarella cheese.. a little romano even and mash it all together. Then fry up a medium 0nion in butter. Mix together.
swonderful
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