How to make cauliflower rice

Making cauliflower rice is a simple but messy process. Seriously when I'm done there are flecks of cauliflower all over my kitchen counter. However, when I checked the price of pre-riced cauliflower at my store, I decided it would behoove me to batch rice some cauliflower for my freezer.

I can't believe a paltry 10oz of riced cauliflower was over $4! I can buy a whole head for $2, shred it myself and end up with a lot more than 10oz. I put it in a freezer bag and have it ready when I want it.

All you need to do this:

Cauliflower (I recommend doing at least 3 heads at a time)

Food processer with a chop blade (6 cup or larger recommended)

Freezer bags or other storage containers

First, you need to prep your cauliflower. Wash your cauliflower and remove the center stalk. You need to cut or pull your head of cauliflower into smaller pieces that will fit in your food processer chute, for mine that is about 2in by 3in maximum. Put your chopping blade on your food processor, I use the same blade that shreds cheese. Fill your chute with cauliflower. It will feed in to the processor and be chopped into small pieces.

If your cauliflower gets mushy, check the blade on your food processor. It might be designed to blend/puree.

When the bowl is full (about 2 heads for my 6 cup food processor), empty the riced cauliflower into a storage container and put it in the fridge for use in the next few days or freeze it for later use.

When you are ready to eat it, it should be cooked to give it a more rice-like texture. A lot of the grocery store packages are designed for steaming it but personally I think it has better flavor and texture if it’s sautéed.

For basic preparation, you can sauté in olive oil or butter with some salt and pepper. For Asian dishes, I like to sauté it in sesame oil.

Low carb stuffed peppers in the Instant Pot

Stuffed peppers using black beans instead of rice is one of my go-to low carb meals. Even though a cup of cooked beans and a cup of rice both have around 45 carbs, the black beans have so much fiber they only have around 30 net carbs. The rice has almost no fiber! Plus, black beans have 3x as much protein.

Since I recently became obsessed with my instant pot electric pressure cooker and started a low carb diet at the beginning of the year, I wanted to try making them in the instant pot.

I also used ground turkey instead of beef to keep them lower calorie. Is this diet over yet? Sigh.

Ingredients:

20 oz ground turkey (you can use beef if you want)

15 oz can of black beans, drained and rinsed

3 cups shredded cheddar or mozzarella cheese (or cheese of your choice, something that will melt nicely), divided

4-6 bell peppers (I buy the multi-colored 3 pack of peppers)

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon Hungarian paprika (you can use regular but I like Hungarian or smoked)

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon ground pepper

1 ½ cups chicken broth (if using ground beef, I suggest using beef broth)
sour cream, optional garnish

Directions:

Mix ground turkey with 2 cups of cheese and all spices until well combined.

Turn your instant pot on and set to sauté, normal. Place the trivet in the bottom and pour the broth in the bottom of the pot. This will allow the pot to pre-heat while you get your peppers ready and help it to come up to pressure faster. Cut the tops off and remove the seeds from the peppers. Cut a small hole in the bottom of each pepper to allow fat from the meat to drain out.

Fill the peppers with the meat mixture and place on top of the trivet. Be careful, as the sides of the pot will be hot. Top the peppers with the remaining cheese.

Press cancel on the Instant Pot to turn off the sauté function and press manual pressure high and set for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, quick release the pressure. 

Check the internal temperature to check it's at least 165 degrees (I use a digital thermometer like this one).

176 degrees, ready to go!

I cut it in half and top it with sour cream. If you like this recipe, check out my low carb stuffed pepper soup for the IP, made with quinoa!

Low carb stuffed pepper soup for the Instant Pot electric pressure cooker!

It's a new year and we are on the low carb train for the month of January. One of my favorite dishes when eating low carb is a version of stuffed peppers. Instead of rice and meat stuffing you stuff the peppers with meat and black beans to keep the carb count low. It's delicious but it takes forever to make the filling and then bake the peppers until they are tender. So, since it's winter and I am lazy, I have adapted this as a soup for my electric pressure cooker.

I made this in my 6-quart instant pot duo electric pressure cooker.

We're doing a looser, modified low carb diet. Being a little less strict will help us to stay on it longer while still eliminating most sugar and hopefully dropping a few pounds. If you are doing a stricter low carb diet, you might want to modify this to reduce the total number of carbs, thus I have flagged the 3 biggest offenders in the list below - black beans, quinoa and canned tomatoes. These numbers are what is added to the total recipe and not per serving.


This recipe takes approximately 40 minutes for prep, pressurizing and cook time.

Ingredients:
20 oz lean ground turkey or ground beef
1 packet chili seasoning
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 large green peppers, diced
2 large red peppers, diced
1 can fire roasted diced tomatoes (adds 14 net carbs)
1 can black beans (adds 38 net carbs)
1 cup quinoa (I used tri-color Trader Joe's quinoa; adds 17 net carbs)
2 cans beef broth
extra water to cover contents

Meat ready to brown

Directions:
Turn your instant pot to saute on normal heat and add your meat, chili seasoning and garlic. My meat was extra lean, so I also used some olive oil in the bottom of  pot. As your meat is browning, you will need to stir it occasionally, you can dice your peppers.

Diced red pepper

After the meat is browned, add your peppers, tomatoes, black beans and quinoa to the pot.

Everything but the broth.

Pour in two cans of beef broth and add extra water until the contents of the pot is covered.

All ingredients added and covered with broth.

In the 6 qt IP, it will be almost to the fill line. I gave it a little stir to mix everything up and then set the pot to manual pressure cook high for 14 minutes. It will take about 10-15 minutes to come to pressure because the pot is really full. When it's ready, do a natural pressure release for 5 minutes (to reduce the chance the soup will spray out) and then quick pressure release.

Now it's time to eat!