Cauliflower Wings

If you’ve been around ForensicBBQ for awhile, you know I schedule these posts out. I try to do a solid smoke once a week, usually on the weekend. Sometimes, a weekday cook turns out awesome and that gets added to the mix. I end up making these posts a bit in advance to always give y’all fresh content.

As I was looking through the calendar, I saw a Forensic Friday fell on April Fools Day. I made these on December 26th, had posts scheduled until early March – but no better post for an April Fools Day Forensic Friday than a fake ass “Wing”. I can only imagine your disgust as you’ve been waiting for what good cook I had this week – and you get Cauliflower “Wings”. And no, it’s not a joke. Let’s get this thing going.

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Recipe

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The Prep Table

I can make a good chicken wing: Cayenne Pepper Sauce Wings! ||| A “Way Hot” Wing Wednesday ||| Chicken Wings – 4 Seasoning Taste Test

I joke and say the inflation caused me to stray from the bird, but in all honesty, I did want to see how this would turn out. I’ll preface it with this: If you think this is a replacement for chicken wings, you’re way off base. Doesn’t even come close. But as a cauliflower recipe, does it work?

We’re going to break up this dirty ass cauliflower to “bite-sized wing-like” portions, or as known in MrsForensicBBQ’s world as florets. Give these a rinse post cut and time to prep the batter.

All we’re really doing here is going to mix up some milk/flour with a little seasoning. Make a nice thick batter that will give it a little breading consistency to add to the cauliflower. If – very strong if – I make these again, I’ll jazz up that batter – but until then, we’re experimenting. We’ll throw these on the RecTeq at 450 until the batter starts to brown. Nothing terribly exciting – so I gotta make a sauce that pops.

I was already planning on saucing half of these with some Melinda’s Creamy Style Ghost Pepper Wing Sauce – but I thought just maybe MrsForensicBBQ would try this if I made a garlic parmesan sauce. Let’s get going with the process.

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The Process

Once we got that batter looking nice and smooth, we’re going to coat the cauliflower. What I did was line a jerky rack with some parchment, coated a piece of veggie, placed it on the paper. Repeat until it was done. I was waiting for the RecTeq to reach 450, so I knew I had a little bit of time.

By the time the grill got to temp, a lot of the batter had pooled under the wing. I didn’t let it drip off nearly enough. So I just transported the cauliflower pieces over to a fresh piece of parchment. Put it on the smoker and let it cook while I went in to make the garlic parmesan sauce.

Pretty sure this is where MrsForensicBBQ says “Hell naw, I’m out”. She saw the parmesan wedge of cheese and was curious. She saw the stick of butter and said “byeee”. Melted up a stick of butter, added some garlic/onion powder and pepper and then mixed in the cheese.

This sauce smelled so good. A little more pepper would’ve been good for the sauce (Can you tell I was missing some flavoring with this recipe?)

I’m sure if we had a less-healthy batter, maybe some deep frying – we could’ve gotten close to a traditional Chicken Wing. But pulling them from the smoker, piling them up readying for the sauce – Wasn’t really feeling it. Let’s get some flavor going.

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The Result

I still like some spice with my “wings”. Melinda’s always brings it. If these cauliflower nugs were going to be at all palatable, it needed some great sauce. I decided to do a half-and-half – spicy and buttery.

Tossed these in the ghost pepper sauce as well as the garlic parmesan and did a green onion presentation topper. Here’s what we ended up with:

On a scale of 1-10 in the chicken wing world – these place a solid 1. No chance these replicate even a boneless chicken wing. Not even close.

But as I sat down to eat breaded, sauced cauliflower, these actually turned out tasting pretty good. Cauliflower isn’t my game. It never will be. But that buttery garlic parmesan tasted awesome on these. The Melinda’s brought some serious heat, and it was pleasant while eating cauliflower. I don’t really see me ever making these again, but I’m not terribly disappointed in them. I like to try new things, and I’m happy to present these to you on this April Fools Day.

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The Recipe