Cauliflower rice salad recipe might make you forget your regular slaw
You can never have too many crunchy, cruciferous salads in your summer repertoire. They’re essential at cookouts where they provide contrasting texture and complementary nutrition for grilled proteins. They’re built to hold up, resisting wilting and mushiness, so they can be proudly passed around at picnics, or refrigerated for several days for an instantaneous meal with, say, chickpeas, a hard-cooked egg or leftover chicken.
Cabbage is arguably the most common starting point for this kind of salad, with slaw variations galore, but it can be fun to explore other vegetables in the family, using shredded, raw Brussels sprouts or blanched, chopped broccoli as a base, for example.
For this recipe, I was aiming for maximum crunch and a package of riced cauliflower at the grocery store was calling my name. You could pick up a bag of it, or rice cauliflower yourself using a box grater or food processor, if you prefer.
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Combined with a colorful medley of diced red bell pepper, red onion, kohlrabi (or broccoli stems or celery), plus lots of fresh, chopped parsley and nutty sunflower seeds, all tossed in a lemon-olive oil dressing, it makes for a salad that brings that essential, hearty crunch in a delightfully unexpected way. I think you’ll agree it deserves a top spot in the summer salad lineup.
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Make ahead: The salad may be assembled, minus the toasted sunflower seeds, up to 2 days in advance of serving; refrigerate until ready to serve.
Storage: Refrigerate leftovers for up to 2 days.
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