Mashed Cauliflower is essentially a creamy cauliflower puree that makes a delicious low-carb or keto alternative to mashed potatoes.

Mashed Cauliflower
If you’re not concerned about cutting the carbs, it’s also just a delicious way to prepare cauliflower and makes a great side dish to accompany any roast or chop like Garlic Lover’s Roast Beef, Pork Chops with Dijon Sauce or Rosemary and Lemon Roasted Chicken.
This easy mashed cauliflower recipe is made with just 5 ingredients–cauliflower, garlic cloves, buttermilk and butter. Will it taste like mashed potatoes? Pretty close! But of course, it’s cauliflower so keep that in mind. If you want more of a potato texture, you can do half mashed potatoes with half cauliflower similar to this Baked Potato Soup recipe.
How To Make Cauliflower Mash
If you can boil water, you can make this easy dish! Simply boil or steam the cauliflower in water or broth until it becomes tender. Then puree it with liquid in an immersion blender until it becomes smooth. This is the immersion blender (affil link) I use. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use your regular blender, just be careful not to over-process it and turn it into soup.
Tips and Variations
I like using buttermilk because it’s creamy, and low-fat. If you don’t have buttermilk, light sour cream also works great. Adding a touch butter gives it that creamy, mashed potato flavor. You can add herbs, cheese, bacon, etc like I did in this Loaded Cauliflower Mash Bake.
More Cauliflower Recipes
- Cauliflower Fried “Rice
- Cauliflower Rice Biryani
- Low Carb “Potato” Salad
- Cauliflower Rice Arancini
- Cauliflower Soup
Mashed Cauliflower
Ingredients
- 1 medium head cauliflower cut up into florets
- 4 cloves crushed garlic
- 1/3 cup 1% buttermilk
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tbsp salted butter plus optional more for serving
Instructions
- Steam or boil cauliflower and garlic until soft.
- Drain the cauliflower, then add buttermilk, butter, salt, pepper and purée with an immersion blender. (If you don't own a hand blender, you should consider getting one. It is one of my most used gadgets in my kitchen, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it!) A regular blender would work fine as well.
Last Step:
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Photo credit: Jess Larson
This recipe is a staple in house, super yummy!
Can you use minced garlic or garlic salt instead of crushed garlic?
Excellent. Just made this dish and used lite sour cream and garlic paste since I had no fresh garlic.
I MADE THIS TONIGHT AND IT WAS SO DELICIOUS AND CREAMY.
I USED SOUR CREAM AS I DIDN’T
HAVE BUTTERMILK. THANKS GINA I SERVED AS A SIDE WITH THE MAPLE DIJON CHICKEN.
BTW MY FUSSY HUSBAND HAD NO CLUE IT WAS CAULIFLOWER.
FYI when I imported to WW, it imported as slow cooker pork carnitas.
Thanks, fixed 🙂
MY BAD!! U on trading the reviews, I realized I messed up and put 4 RAW cloves of garlic. I didn’t read about streaming it along with the cauliflower. No wonder it was so strong!! I probably would leave 5 instead of 3 stars
Autocorrect error in my message.
I meant to say “Upon reading the reviews”
Delicious, but WAY too much garlic in my opinion for 1 head of cauliflower and I love garlic. 2 cloves would be plenty.