I love to experiment in the kitchen and Friday night is always pizza night at here. I’ve been cutting way back on carbs lately and so I wanted to try my hand at making the cauliflower pizza crust I’ve seen all over Pinterest using riced cauliflower (which is just cauliflower processed into tiny bits to resemble rice). Unfortunately, that attempt at cauliflower pizza was a recipe fail, but the good thing was that I had some leftover riced cauliflower to use up and so these little sneaky mini meat loafs were created. They’re sneaky because they have mozzarella and so the little bits of cauliflower go undetected to get in just a bit of extra veggies for the kids (and non veggie lovers).
These little mini meatloaf muffins combine beef with garlic, onion, mozzarella, riced cauliflower and some herbs. They bake up a lot quicker than a standard meatloaf so that you can have them on the table fairly quickly- and they are nice and moist. If you like things a bit spicy you might want to add some chile pepper flakes for a bit of a kick.
Ingredients
- 1 pound pasture raised ground beef
- 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
- 1 teaspoon diced garlic or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella (you might also try cheddar)
- 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 cup riced cauliflower
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup cooked leftover grains (brown rice or bread crumbs)
- extra cheese for topping
Instructions
- Note: To rice cauliflower place it in the food processor and process until the cauliflower resembles rice.
- Preheat oven to 400.
- Crumble beef into a bowl and sprinkle on remaining ingredients. Stir or mix with your hands until the mixture is well combined.
- Line 9 muffin pans with cupcake papers. Put 1/3 cup of meat mixture into each muffin tin. Fill the empty tins halfway with water. Sprinkle a little bit of cheese on top of each muffin.
- Bake at 400 for 23-30 minutes, or until muffins reach an internal temperature of 160 degrees fahrenheit.
Hi! sweet recipe. one question: is the cauliflower steamed/roasted/cooked at all
before ricing/adding it into the meat mixture? Have noticed many recipes which
use cauliflower as an ingredient (even desserts!) and it must give baked goods a
cool texture. I love trying different techniques to ordinary recipes. thanks!
The cauliflower is raw when you add it into the meat loaf muffins and with it being so small it gets cooked plenty when the muffins bake. Hope you enjoy the muffins!
I love meatloaf. Cannot wait to try your recipe. Thanks for sharing it Katie.
Looks good.
I like using grains and veggies in my meatloaf too…make thenmeatmgo further, and then it is a one stop shop of food groups too! Thx for sharing with us again Katie!
[...] Dinner: Mini Meat Loaves, Hasselback Potatoes, Steamed Veggies, Milk Kefir [...]