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This pureed pumpkin and cauliflower mash is a delightful twist on the typical Thanksgiving and fall favorites.
Pumpkin Cauliflower Mash
My favorite holiday is coming soon, Thanksgiving. The family gathering together with many who haven’t been able to see each other since last Thanksgiving due to distance, makes for a comforting time to catch up and enjoy a delicious meal.
Being from an Italian family, it’s never just a meal, it’s an all day event of eating. We have the traditional fare of turkey, mashed potatoes, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, applesauce, broccoli rabe, and salad because we always end every meal with salad. But I’m always the one to try to change things up a bit and make something a little more, shall we say, unique? Sometimes it works and sometimes it flops, but I always try to make a healthier option to bring even if it is just me, myself, and I eating it.
Oh they all usually try my different, nontraditional recipes, because of course they are polite and all. But rarely does my family ask for me to make them again. SO you can see the kind of Italian family I am dealing with here right? STUBBORN is the only word for the typical Italian personality. And because I too am Italian and Stubborn myself, I do not give up in hopes they will all come around to healthier eating habits one day.
This recipe is my idea of boycotting the mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes for a lower carb dish that I can enjoy. I plan to bring it on Thanksgiving but I have no idea if anyone will try it. I guess if I don’t tell them it contains cauliflower, there might be a better change they will eat it. 🙂
Regardless if they do or not the hubby and I enjoyed this recipe immensely! Thankfully my hubby who is quite picky said it was delicious! As far as the kiddies go, they unfortunately SAW the cauliflower on the counter. If they hadn’t I’m sure they would have had some. My best work is when I don’t share with the kids what’s in a recipe, they will at least try it. But in this case, they spied the secret ingredient and I was caught red handed. Honestly though with the pumpkin flavor you really don’t taste much of the cauliflower at all. My kids are tough and stubborn just like their full blooded Italian momma. They may have won this round, but in the end I will always win the battle!
Other pumpkin recipes you might like for Thanksgiving; Low Carb Cornbread, Loaded Mashed Cauliflower, Pumpkin Pie, Candied Pecans, and Cranberry sauce.
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Keto Low Carb Pumpkin Mash
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Low Carb Pumpkin Cauliflower Mash
Ingredients
- 1 head cauliflower about 6 cups
- 2 cups pumpkin puree
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon garlic salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 4 tablespoons butter
Instructions
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Steam cauliflower until tender, about 25-30 minutes.
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Place cauliflower into a food processor and pulse until small crumbles.
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Add the rest of the ingredients and process and pulse until desired texture and consistency.
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Taste and adjust salt and seasonings as needed.
Recipe Notes
Net Carbs: 4g
Brenda's Notes:
- You could certainly replace the heavy cream for unsweetened almond milk for dairy free.
- You could also eliminate the butter if needed or replace with a vegan butter for dairy free.
- If you want even more pumpkin flavor I would suggest adding an additional cup of pureed pumpkin to the mix.
- This recipe was first published in October 2014 and updated with video in November 2019.
I married into a half Irish/Italian family. Talk about stubborn! I had no idea they hated deviating so much from tradition until the first year I tried to tell my husband I should bring a fun side dish. Apparently they like what they like and that is that…haha. Now this dish? I would gobble it up in no time!
I can NOT believe you added in pumpkin!! How divine!
This sounds great, I’m going to try it!
Wow, what a unique cauliflower mash! Really like your idea of adding pumpkin puree.
very unique…i love it
I like this idea.My husband is definitely not a veg person.I have to sneak some veg in my cooking to try and get him to eat more. What I’m going to try is to replace pumpkin with sweet potato. Sweet potato is lower on the GI scale that pumpkin and I have to stay on the low to med level since i have a blood sugar problem. I’m looking forward to trying this recipe.I bet this combination would work well in pumpkin pie by using 1/2 cauliflower and 1/2 pumpkin in the pie filling recipe. As a matter of fact I’m going to try this and see how it works.
Another great idea for pumpkin puree!
I’m stubborn too and wouldn’t have tried if I had seen the cauliflower, either buuut… if you say you can’t really taste the cauliflower, maybe I should try. 🙂
I basically spend all year looking forward to Thanksgiving. This will definitely be making an appearance this time around!
Here is something new to try! I love mashed cauliflower and adding pumpkin makes perfect sense!! YUM!!
I have GOT to try this!!!! Amazing! Well done! Bravo! I will eat the whole bowl myself. 🙂
Um, this is all sorts of brilliant! I can’t wait to make it!
I love Thanksgiving, too!! This is a great side dish idea. Easy, too!
Such a great idea. An awesome side for this time of year!
I would love this side at our Thanksgiving table. I’m sneaking them in one by one!
Pumpkin too?? So creative!
This is so clever. I love the idea of pumpkin in cauliflower mash.
It’s funny, I hated cauliflower as a kid and now I love it. Maybe all kids grow out of it.
I made this today for thanksgiving and made the following changes. I doubled the recipe (serves 15) except I only used 2 cans pumpkins purée and I roasted sweet onions and mushrooms ahead of times (cut up 2 lge sweet onions and 2 containers mushrooms, spread on baking pan, toss with olive oil, kosher salt and pepper, roast at 475 degrees for 30 min, stir, then roast another 20 min until onions are caramelized). It is amazing!! Thank you, Brenda, for the idea!
Those adaptions sound great!
So dis you then just mix the onions and mushrooms into the mash?
So this sounds wonderful but I have a question about the serving size… it says 1 gram… about how much is that in Tablespoons ?? sure sounds awfully small… I appreciate any help you can give me.
It was a glitch with my recipe plug in.
Wow just saw this, wish I had seen before thanksgiving. We are non dairy, low carb, no sugar. so I am going to use coconut milk in place of heavy cream. This sounds like it will be a great alternative to squash. Thanks
Lovely recipe and presentation