Garlic Brown Butter Mashed Cauliflower
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
Brown butter mashed cauliflower is a tasty alternative to mashed potatoes. It’s roasted cauliflower puréed with garlic and thyme-infused brown butter. It’s perfect for holiday dinners, simple to make, and ready in just 40 minutes!
This brown butter mashed cauliflower is buttery, smooth, and very delicious. It’s an easy weeknight or holiday side dish to serve with roasts, stews, and other hearty mains.
We love mashed cauliflower because it’s everything we love about mashed potatoes, but without all the peeling and prep. It’s also much lighter than mashed potatoes, leaving more room for our other favorite foods like stuffing and pumpkin pie!
There are two simple things we do that make this recipe extra flavorful. First, we roast the cauliflower over gentle heat (so we don’t brown it), which removes a lot of the moisture, leaving it mashable like potatoes.
Then, we make a simple brown butter and infuse it with garlic and thyme. It all gets puréed in the food processor (or a blender) until it’s nice and smooth. To serve, drizzle it with brown butter and garnish with fresh thyme. Yum!
Can I make them ahead of time? I feel that mashed cauliflower is best eaten shortly after it’s cooked, as its flavor becomes stronger when reheated. If you’re okay with that, go ahead and make this dish up to 3 days in advance. Store it in the fridge in a sealed container until you’re ready to serve it. Warm it up gently on the stove with a few splashes of vegetable or chicken stock.
What goes with brown butter mashed cauliflower
Brown butter mashed cauliflower is a savory side dish that’s perfect for the fall and winter months. Serve it with a Sunday roast, at Thanksgiving or Christmas, or anytime you would serve mashed potatoes. It’s delicious, light-tasting, and everyone will enjoy it!
Mains that pair well with brown butter mashed potatoes:
Garlic Brown Butter Mashed Cauliflower Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 large heads of cauliflower (chopped into large pieces)
- ⅓ cup salted butter
- 2 cloves garlic (grated with a Microplane or very finely minced)
- 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
- Sea salt (to taste)
Instructions
- Set your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the chopped cauliflower on a baking sheet and pop it into your oven. No need to wait for the oven to preheat. Let the cauliflower roast for about a half hour, turning once, until it is soft and starting to brown.2 large heads of cauliflower
- While the cauliflower is roasting, make the garlic brown butter. Place the butter in a small frying pan over medium-high heat. Let it melt then reduce the heat to medium and keep it on the heat, without stirring it, for about 5 minutes. The butter will froth then settle down. Once you start seeing a few brown specks on the froth you can stir it to see how brown it is. You want quite a few specks of brown. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the garlic and thyme. The residual heat from the butter will cook the garlic.⅓ cup salted butter, 2 cloves garlic, 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
- When the cauliflower is soft, remove it from the oven and transfer it to your food processor. Blend until smooth, stopping to scrape the sides of your food processor as needed. See notes. Add the brown butter and blend again. Salt to taste. (Note: just like with regular mashed potatoes, mashed cauliflower also needs a good amount of salt.)
Notes
Nutrition
We have thoroughly tested this recipe for accuracy. However, individual results may vary. See our full recipe disclosure here.
So the picture looks like you added browned butter to the top of the dish also. Is that additional browned butter and if so, how much? Looks yummy.
I kept aside a couple of teaspoons just to make it look prettier. 🙂
I just made this – using ghee and extra salt (whole 30) and it was delicious, thank you so much
It’s so good, isn’t it? Great call on the ghee + salt for Whole30!