Real Food Live | Buffalo Cauliflower Wings

Hey everyone and welcome back to another episode of Real Food Live

My name is Alina. I'm a holistic nutritionist, your editor-in-chief at the Hardy Soul, and also hosting today's episode

Now, as usual, before we actually get into making the recipe, I do have my wonderful comment

monitoring person, Marianne, so she will be looking out for comments. If you guys have any questions about nutrition info, health swaps, and substitutions

she's there to answer everything, well, I'm there to answer everything for you

She's going to ask me the questions. Okay, awesome. Let's get started. So today what we're going to be making is buffalo cauliflower wings

Now if you're wondering if you heard me correctly, you're like, wait, what

Did she say cauliflower? I think Alina meant to say chicken wings

No, unfortunately, it is cauliflower wings, but I promise they taste just as good as chicken

wings and they are so, so amazing, it all comes down to using the right sauce

So here's the thing. We all love chicken wings, right, when we go out to a restaurant, but we all know that

it's so easy to just end up eating an entire bucket of chicken wings because the sauce is so amazing

it's deep fried, it's super creamy, usually it has a lot of sodium or some sugar added in

And of course with the chicken, I mean how often are we making chicken wings at home unless

it's from like a frozen box or at the restaurant, they're usually using factory farm chicken

which has antibiotics in it and it's just not the healthiest source of protein

So instead we are going to be using cauliflower. And the great thing about cauliflower, of course, is it's suitable for vegetarians and for

vegans, it's also more high in fiber and it's actually pretty dense in protein too

So trust me on this, these taste so, so good. So we're going to get started

And the first thing we're going to do before we do anything else is actually chop this cauliflower

Now in the past, I was not very good at chopping cauliflower. I just sort of used to hack at it and cut it into pieces

Then I discovered this thing called YouTube, which actually tells you how to chop things properly

You will be amazed by the things you can find on YouTube. You can probably figure out how to chop a watermelon into an elephant looking shape

Don't quote me on that, but yeah, you can pretty much find anything on YouTube. So I did research how to chop a cauliflower a little while back and I found this amazing

amazing method, which is what I want to share with you guys. So the first thing you want to do is you want to flip your cauliflower upside down as I have

And you want to start removing the leaves like so because you really want to be able to see the stock

That is what we're going to start pulling away from. Okay, so I've removed most of the leaves

Oh, and of course if you do see any brown at the top as well, you can just take off that

when you are picking your cauliflower, you know there isn't too much of that going on

I am already making a mess, great. So just take off a little bit of the brown spots just to be on the safe side

Okay, so here's the key. You don't want to start chopping at it from here

You want to chop at it from the bottom. And what you're going to do is, I'm using a pairing knife over here, you're just going

to start chopping or cutting around the stalk so that these guys

just sort of fall off. See how gently that just fell off? It's just floated off

That's great. So you're going to start with the top part and you're just going to start taking them off

I do realize these are much bigger chunks right now. Don't worry, we will cut them down into smaller pieces

And I also have a very handy hack for how to do that as well and still make sure it looks pretty

So as you can see, this is not taking very long at all

all I have chopped all of them off and then what you're left with is the stock so

that's what it should look like at the end you're preserving as much of the

cauliflower florets as possible so I can put that at the side and clean up a

little bit okay so what you're gonna do now now that you have these giant

cauliflower pieces you don't want to make your wings this size right you don't

want to have like a giant cauliflower wing this size you could maybe you could actually if you wanted to so you You can determine whatever size you want but I personally like something a little bit more bite size of course

So what you do is, you take your knife and you actually make a little slit in the stock

and then it just sort of easily falls apart and breaks into two

So what you could do is, I mean, you might be wondering, well why can't I just slice it the entire way through

And what ends up happening if you slice the entire way through, the world's not going to end, it's just you get a little bit of a sharp edge

which doesn't look as pretty or as natural. So, see, this looks a little bit more natural as well

Okay, so we're just going to continue doing that for a bit

and in the meantime, I will tell you a bit about the benefits of cauliflower

So something I actually learned recently too, I didn't realize how high in protein

Vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower are, this is probably a medium-sized head cauliflower

and this has around 11 grams of protein, which is not bad

It's kind of like two eggs, so a little over two eggs actually, so that's not bad at all

for a vegetable. Vitamin C is also very high in cauliflower, which is amazing for our skin, for our immune system

our hair, our nails, because it helps make collagen. So definitely get a lot of vitamin C in here

I believe it's nearly 300 milligrams per head as well when it comes to vitamin C

And oh, one of the most important things actually about cauliflower and the Brastika vegetables

in general is that they have something called Indul3 carbonyl. Now it's also known as I3C and you may find it on certain hormone balance

supplement blends and what it does is it helps with the the detoxification of

estrogen or excess estrogen in the body and then along with the fiber too which

binds that excess estrogen it's awesome it's great and I see we already have a

question yes Marianne what's the question we have some comments mm-hmm Mal says

hi Elena hi and Jeff says I love cauliflower wings oh amazing I love that someone

actually knows what these are already and like them. That's great. And Kevin says, mmm, yum. Okay, so we have a lot of people excited. I'm so glad

I'm so glad you guys are excited about these cauliflower wings. Because trust me, they are really

really good. I have made a batch last night as well and my husband loved them and I also love them

But there's a trick to getting them right, which I am going to talk about as well. Okay

I promise we are nearly done with these cauliflower florets. Last, one to go one more fun fact about cauliflower for you vitamin K is in here too

lots of vitamin K which helps calcium absorb for strong bones and teeth as well

okay I think that's enough I'm just gonna wash my hands a little bit rinse off

some of that excess cauliflower and now that we have these cut into florex

we're gonna make the batter so I'm just gonna do a little switcheroo over here so you

you can see what I'm adding in. And so it's only four things for the batter

The first thing you're gonna add in is some chickpea flour. Now I'm not gonna lie, chickpea flour had run out

at the past two, three convenience stores I went to, so I'm using a substitute here

but you definitely want to use chickpea flour because the thing with chickpea flowers

it's gonna really help make your buffalo wings much more crispier, and a little more

a little bit more dense as well. They're not going to be floppy or soggy

They're going to be super, super crisp. So I am just using a gluten-free flour mix just for right now

But highly recommend using chickpea. It is going to be much better

But yeah, if you have any questions as well about other flower substitutes you may want to use

you can type away and let me know. But I would not recommend very light flowers like

coconut flour as well which absorbs a lot of water and you would need like

three times as much water and it's gonna be a bit soggy

so yes I don't know if I made it clear but chickpea flour is the way to go

okay so I did a cup of flour a cup of water

I'm just sort of mix mix mixing that together you just want to make sure it's a

little smooth get those little knots and bumps out just press down with your spatula and then two more things I gonna to add in and again you can add in more stuff too This is just like very basic All I adding in is a little bit of sea salt

This is around a half a teaspoon. I'm also adding in one teaspoon of garlic powder just for that flavor

So if you wanted, you know, you can add in, you can try adding in some other herbs over here

You could add in, if you really want extra, extra spice, add in some more chili flakes, although I promise you that

although I promise you that hot sauce that we're going to use later on is pretty strong

So that's it. It was that easy. Super smooth. And we have another question. Yes

Penny wants to know what other flowers could you use. Yes. Okay

So here's what I think. Now I have experimented with these for two flowers that went wrong and one that went right

Chick-bee flour, amazing. Coconut flour, no. Gluten-free flour, it's okay. It's okay, it's still going to be a little bit soggy

I think the key is to use a flour that is a bit more dense in nature

So I think brown rice flour is one that I've seen online as well that has sort of a similar consistency to chickpea flour

So I would go with something like that, a bit more of a hard flour like that

Maybe if you're okay with some gluten but it's not weed, a spelt flour may be okay as well

So yeah, don't hold me to it, but chickpea flour all the way if you can

brown rice. Okay, awesome. So now that we have the batter done, we are going to pour in

this cauliflower. So I'm actually just going to do it by hand because I am too scared

of dropping these if I lean the chopping board into the bowl. It doesn't take too long

All right, so now we have the cauliflower in here in the batter and this will just take

around 30 seconds guys. All you need to do is just make sure you are covering

the cauliflower as much as you can with this batter. Don't worry if it looks kind of like ugly sludge right now

It definitely will, but don't you worry. Once you add in that hot sauce and roast this for a while

it's just, ugh, it looks amazing. So, okay, there we go. That was pretty much it, guys

You have mixed it in with the batter, and now what we're going to do, What we're going to do is have a baking sheet ready with some parchment paper on it

And the first thing you want to do actually before even putting the cauliflower on it, as

always I like to grease my baking sheet a little bit. So I have some coconut oil over here and a little brush and don't go too crazy but just

add on a little bit of coconut oil and you're using this just so that it doesn't stick

Again, I like using coconut oil because it's a saturated fat, which means it is less sensitive

to heat and to light. So when you are baking this at a high temperature, you know that it's not going rancid or

that it is damaging for your health. So it's my preferred oil of choice when I am lining any baking sheet

That are ghee actually, which is clarified butter. Both of them amazing and they leave a great flavor too

So now what you're going to do, you're just going to put all of this coffee

cauliflower onto the baking sheet and just spread it out like as much as possible see that

they don't stick together okay so we're just going to do that make sure it doesn't

stick together and we have another question yes well we have a couple of nice

comments oh Kimberly says thank you for actually saying the measurements oh no

worries they are also going to be available in the link as well if you did miss

anything so for any audience member who did it's in the link yeah and Teresa says

first time here love this oh amazing hi Teresa welcome to the show awesome so happy to

have you cool so guys now this is ready to go into the oven this is gonna go at

450 degrees so the oven has been preheating and you want to leave it for around

15 minutes so after 15 minutes then you take it out and then we add in like

the hot sauce and the other the butter that I have on the side, and you toss it in that, and then it goes in again for another 25 minutes

So right now, I'm going to put this aside for 15 minutes

So, let's put this in the oven. And of course, because I'm not going to make you watch me for 15 minutes, and just kill time

and tell you jokes and more fun facts about cauliflower, I have actually had it done already

So these are pre-baked, this is what it looks like. Again because we had run out of the chickpea flour and I using gluten flour here it not gonna be as as crisp when I used chickpea flour last night to make the final batch that I going to show you it was a little bit thicker and dense and far

more crispy and a little bit blackened as well which I liked so now that we

have this ready what you do is you just need to mix the remaining two ingredients

so this is two-thirds cup of hot sauce and then I have one teaspoon of grass fed

butter. Now you can do grass-fed butter or you can do key. They are both very

healthy options and if you didn't want to use any animal products or dairy

at all you can probably just use something like coconut oil and that would be fine

too. It's just for a little bit of like extra rounding out the flavor and that's

all. And now with the hot sauce do try and buy a hot sauce that is just the

bare bones ingredients. So avoid things like sulfites and other preservatives in there

This one that I'm using is just plain peppers, vinegar, a little bit of salt, I believe

So very, very simple ingredients, no added preservatives. That's what you want to stick to

Okay, so what we're going to do, actually I'm going to wash this bowl here for a second because it's a big one

And I apologize, I will be back in just a second. And I'm back

Okay, what we're going to do guys is, let's put that on top of this

We're going to add in the hot sauce, okay? Then you are going to add in the butter as well

And just give it a little bit of a mix. I'm going to wash the spatula as well

Just reuse the same bowl, it's fine. It's messy anyway. So you just give it a good little whisk and now you are going to put that half

half baked cauliflower in here for further roasting. So what I like to do is just, hold on

I'm gonna bring this closer, I'm gonna pour some in, take this parchment paper like this

and make a bit of a funnel and pour in all of that cauliflower

Okay, I did not make a mess of things and I'm very proud of myself

Okay, so here we go guys. You can see now that this is starting to get a lot of hot sauce. Action

Coat it as much as possible. Get every corner and crevice that you can

Okay, and it didn't even take that long. It just takes around 15 seconds, it seems

So not very long at all. And then what you're going to do again

you're going to put this onto parchment paper and you're going to, or actually I shouldn't have thrown that out

basically use that same parchment paper that I have now discarded. And then put these cauliflower on there 25 minutes

You can check a little bit early if you want. Sometimes some people's ovens are a bit different

Check at the 15, 20 minute mark just to make sure everything is okay

Toss it around a little. If you feel like it's getting too blackened, I personally like it as crispy as possible

Okay, so we're gonna put this away for 25 minutes now. And because it's teased

TV. I'm going to show you the finished product now. Okay. As you can see, here is the finished product. I hope you are getting a good glance at this

So you can serve it with celery, with dip. I've used here a tiziki so you can make a vegan taziki if you want

You can use a goat milk based tiziki, which is what this is. And you can see here, like these look amazing

These actually look kind of like buffalo chicken wings. It's the same

sort of it looks the same from far away and sort of the same color and you can see

here that it's really it's crisp it's not soggy and yeah this looks amazing to

serve for any time that you have people over so you can just dip it in a little

bit or we're gonna have a taste that is really really really good and it's got a bit

of a kick but it's a good kick honestly this is amazing for anyone who loves

a little bit of spice and that extra flavor. You can always add more in

you can always tone it back. But this was so easy to make

I'm sure you can make this with other things as well. You can try out roasting broccoli

in a similar manner as well, and serving that with dip. So I hope you enjoy this

Are there any other questions, Marianne? Lakin says, I love all of your tricks and tips

Thanks for sharing. Okay, yeah. Okay, cool. Thank you so much for teaching

in guys