Meatless Friday: Vegan Coconut Butter Cauliflower

For Meatless Friday, Jane Korvemaker cooks up a vegan spin on a favorite Indian dish.

I love Butter Chicken, so this is a really nice substitute, and the red lentils help provide a little bit of protein, especially if you pair it with rice. I’ve shamelessly mildly adapted this recipe from Half-Baked Harvest, who has amazing recipes! I’ve made a reel on Instagram of me making it (follow me @janekorvemaker), which I've shared at the bottom of the recipe. 

Vegan Coconut Butter Cauliflower

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower, broken into florets
2 1/3 cups canned full fat coconut milk
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 inches fresh ginger, minced (or 2 tbsp ginger in a jar)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 tbsp garam masala
2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cayenne pepper, or to taste
1 can (6 ounce) tomato paste
1 cup water
1/3 cup red lentils, washed
2 tbsp coconut oil
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
rice and/or naan, for serving

Directions

1. Wash and separate out the cauliflower florets, place in a large bowl.
2. Mince garlic. If you’re using fresh ginger, mince that as well (I used pre-minced ginger in a jar).
3. Measure out 1/3 cup of coconut milk, mix half the garlic and half the ginger into it and pour over cauliflower; mix it together. Marinate for about 10 minutes (or longer, if you forget like me).
4. While it’s marinating, dice onions and measure out your spices. Make sure you don’t accidentally drop too much cayenne (which I did). Your kids might not eat it now if you do that.
5. Mix tomato paste with coconut milk.
6. Oil up a large pan with 1 tbsp of oil and put your oven on broil. Pour marinated cauliflower onto pan and broil those suckers. The recipe says to broil for about 3-4 minutes until it begins to char, but it took like 7-10 minutes in my oven.
7. Anxiously check oven every minute. I’m sure this isn’t necessary, but it’s what I did.
8. Pull out pan and let cauliflower cool. At this point my phone died so I had to stop for the night, but I’m certain while the cauliflower is baking you could get the sauce going (next step).
9. Put oil into pan and sauté onions on medium-medium high heat in the other tbsp. of oil until lightly translucent. Add in garlic and ginger, sauté until fragrant. Add in the spices, cook maybe 30 seconds.
10. Pour in tomato-coconut milk mixture and one cup of water. Bring to a boil. Add in washed lentils. Lower to a simmer and simmer for about 20 minutes or until lentils are reasonably soft. Stir in coconut oil.
11. Add in cauliflower and mix. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro, which you remembered to chop only just seconds before.
12. Taste and adjust seasoning. Turns out an extra two teaspoons of cayenne is a good spice level for me, but now the salt is needed.

There you have it! I hope you enjoy it. I love Butter Chicken, so this is a really nice substitute, and the red lentils help provide a little bit of protein, especially if you pair it with rice.

Blessed Friday to you!

Click to tweet:
Video: for #MeatlessFriday, watch @JaneKorvemaker cook up a vegan spin on a favorite Indian dish. #catholicmom

Copyright 2022 Jane Korvemaker
Images and video copyright 2022 Jane Korvemaker, all rights reserved