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Mediterranean Roasted Cauliflower Salad is the perfect keto side dish complimenting any main entree or serving as a vegetarian main dish!
Cauliflower Salad
Although I’m an full blooded Italian I crave, like nobodies business, Mediterranean foods. Not surprisingly as they are pretty similar.
I never grew up eating black olives, it was always green with pimentos, Greek or Kalamata. We always had red onion, fresh tomatoes and of course fresh herbs in our house and in our meals at least a few times a week.
Everything, and I mean most everything, was topped with olive oil. My mom rarely made much with butter, except every lazy Sunday night like clock work she would make me and my three brothers the best grilled cheese sandwiches in all the land!
Now that I’m on a low carb diet, I love using cauliflower in unique ways, hence the creation of this salad. While most cauliflower salad recipes are more of a mock potato salad style, this one has that European flare!
Mediterranean Salad
A squirt of lemon was always added to our typical fish dinners on Friday nights. As a child I could never quite understand why my dad was so in love with adding lemon.
But then I grew up and I realized how much lemon makes such a difference in any meal!
I never grew up eating feta cheese either, but the flavors when mixed with fresh roasted veggies are undeniably delicious.Obviously you can eliminate the feta cheese if your dairy free.
Potluck
No meat is needed in this lovely dish because it’s perfect as it is. It’s a fantastic side to bring to a potluck or serve at a summer BBQ party. Make it ahead and the flavors will be even better the next day! If you’re not a fan of cauliflower you could even swap it with roasted broccoli or even green beans or Brussels. It’s very versatile and everyone, even the non low carb crowd will devour this lovely cauliflower salad. Other potluck salads you might like; Cauliflower Mock Potato Salad, Spring Roll Salad, Cucumber Dill Salad, and Summer Confetti Cauliflower Salad.
Roasted Cauliflower
If you’re not a fan of red onion of course you can leave it out. If you prefer different olives or another veggie please adapt as you think your family would enjoy. Roasting all veggies with some olive oil and seasonings in an oven are one of my families most favorite ways to enjoy all kinds of vegetables. I know you might be tempted to skip the roasting step, but please trust me on this, you shouldn’t skip it.
BUT I will say it one more time, YOU MUST NOT LEAVE OUT THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP for this salad.The cauliflower NEEDS to roast. The flavor of roasted cauliflower is beyond amazing and so much tastier than adding it raw in this salad. Enjoy!
Meal Planning
If you love recipes like this for yourself and family, you might be interested in my meal planning membership. Weekly low carb keto dinner meal plan sent to your inbox every Friday with shopping list. The best part about my meal planning feature is that if you aren’t interested in one of the dinner meals you can swap it out for something else! You can even change serving sizes and the shopping list will adjust! It pretty amazing software and I hope you’ll take advantage of it. You can have a sustainable low carb/keto lifestyle when you’re well prepared and planning meals is the key! LEARN MORE TODAY!
Mediterranean Cauliflower Salad
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Mediterranean Roasted Cauliflower Salad
Ingredients
- 4 cups cauliflower florets
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes sliced
- 1/4 cup red onion sliced
- 1/4 cup kalamata olives
- 4 ounces feta cheese crumbled
- 1/4 cup fresh basil chopped
Dressing
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1 lemon zested
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
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Lay cauliflower florets on a baking sheet.
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Toss with 3 tbsp oil and stir to coat well.
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Bake 45 minutes. Set aside to cool.
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In a large bowl add the cooled cauliflower, tomatoes, onion, olives, feta and basil.
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Whisk the dressing ingredients together in another bowl.
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Toss the dressing over the cauliflower salad and mix well.
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Serve immediately or keep refrigerated until ready to serve.
Recipe Notes
This recipe was first published in May 2015 and updated with video in June 2019.
Net Carbs: 6g
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You are right, lemon is such an important addition! This looks wonderful, I bet roasting the cauliflower makes it tastes amazing!
Oh yum – this is totally my kind of dish! Sounds fantastic!
I’m totally Team Lemon…. it’s amazing how much flavours perk up when you add a little acid! Love how you’ve used it here with the mellow roasted cauliflower and the briny olives… all this needs is a big chunk of crusty bread to make it a perfect take-to-work lunch.
Mediterranean (Italian)dishes are wonderful! There are so many healthy dishes to explore from around the Mediterranean Sea made with wonderful extra virgin olive oil. The lemon adds such brightness to a dish! Just love this salad, Brenda!
Lemon does make everything better, and so does olives. We always have a stockpile. Beautiful salad!
So much goodness in this dish. I want a couple of warm pitas to scoop everything up (and into my mouth)!
Mediterranean flavors are always so bright and fresh, and this salad looks like it falls beautifully into that category. And really, you just can’t beat roasted cauliflower!
You had my attention at the mere mention of roasted cauliflower and the other flavors – love them! This salad needs to be made asap, and served with pita bread 🙂
This salad is just lovely! Full of so many flavors that I love and I honestly wouldn’t have thought about adding the roasted cauliflower to it. I need to give it a try.
You’re totally right on this being the perfect dish for a summer BBQ (or picnic!) Plus I’m loving the roasted cauliflower!
Cauliflower is so, so versatile! It’s fast becoming my favorite vegetable (and that’s saying a lot). This salad with all it’s big, bold flavors sounds wonderful! I can’t wait to try this!
This was a winner at our house! We paired it with baked salmon filets. Thank you for the recipe!
This is delicious!
I wanted it hardier to have it as a low carb meal, so added: salami, yellow and zucchini squash and colored pepper. I really enjoyed it! There was still enough dressing with all the additions.