Italian Sausage Cauliflower Bake

When you have no idea what to cook for dinner, I got you.

Italian Sausage Cauliflower Bake, photo and recipe by me, Anna Vocino

Do you ever feel like you’re running out of ideas of what to cook?

This is why I’m here. To help. Let me help you.

I spend all of my free time writing recipes, 95% of which are low carb.

I actually LOL’d when I wrote that above sentence as I don’t have a lot of free time. The recipes I write better be good because I’ve made a commitment to share recipes long term despite growing a sauce and spice business and keeping up with podcasting and voice work.

So far I’ve published over 500 recipes, with another 100 in the hopper, plus an additional 100 coming in the new Eat Happy Italian cookbook next year.

That’s a LOT of content. Don’t forget I have a Full Recipe Index to help locate recipes when you feel stuck.

Today, I received this text from a friend of mine:

Moral of the text: if you’ve neglected to break out your copies of Eat Happy and Eat Happy Too for awhile, you’re in good company. My friend is one of the most intelligent, on-top-of-her-shit people I know, and if she’s struggling to find the time to organize her recipes and meals, so are the rest of us.

So that brings me to my latest easy weeknight meal creation. There’s a bit of prep involved with the cutting and the steaming, but once assembled, you can eat off this bake for a few days. And it probably has ingredients you already regularly buy (and hopefully you regularly buy Eat Happy Kitchen sauces).

This recipe for Italian Sausage Cauliflower Bake is based on casseroles that use mashed potatoes in them. Cauliflower puréed with egg yolks and then baked makes a pretty good substitute. You can also double the cauliflower, eggs, and parmesan in this recipe to get a thicker layer of mash.

If you want to sub ground meat in place of the sausage, just make sure you season the meat sufficiently, as Italian sausage is pre-seasoned pretty well.

And for all of you Superfan Happies who are natural adapters of recipes, I’m curious to see what else you start using baked cauliflower mash in!

OK, enough talk, let’s make dinner…

As always, here’s the downloadable, printable PDF of this recipe (reminder to my friend to click through this and print for later when she’s less busy).

Recipe below pic…

Italian Sausage Cauliflower Bake.

ITALIAN SAUSAGE CAULIFLOWER BAKE

(Serves 6-8)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cauliflower head, cored and chopped into florets

• 4 egg yolks

• 1/4 cup almond flour

• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan

• 1/2 teaspoon salt plus more for seasoning

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 pound uncooked ground Italian sausage

• 1 medium onion, diced

• 1 cup diced carrots

• 1 red pepper, diced

• 1 1/2 cups Cremini diced mushrooms (or you can use baby Bella or white button mushrooms)

• 2 jalapeños, diced, divided

• 2 cups of marinara (I use Eat Happy Kitchen, duh)

• Pepper for seasoning

• 2 cups grated mozzarella

INSTRUCTIONS:

Boil cauliflower florets in salted water for 10-12 minutes or until fork tender. Drain in colander, pat dry well with a dish cloth. In a Vitamix, blender, or food processor, add the cooked cauliflower, egg yolks, almond flour, and parmesan and blend until smooth, about 15-30 seconds, scraping down the sides of the blender, if necessary. Spread olive oil on the bottom of a 9x12 baking dish. Evenly spread the mashed cauliflower mix on the bottom of the greased baking dish, set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat a large, flat-bottomed sauté pan to medium high heat and cook the sausage until it is browned. Using a slotted spoon, remove the sausage from the pan onto a plate, reserving the sausage grease in the sauté pan. Add the onion, carrots, red pepper, and mushrooms to the pan and cook, stirring often, for 10-12 minutes, or until the veggies are soft and cooked through. Season with salt and pepper. Add the majority of your diced jalapeño, reserving some for garnish. Stir in the marinara, cook another 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat.

Evenly spread the cooked sausage over the cauliflower mash in the baking pan. Then evenly layer the vegetable mixture. Add the mozzarella as the top layer.

Bake uncovered at 350 for 30 minutes. Remove from oven, let stand 5 minutes, then serve, garnished with remaining chopped jalapeño.