It’s bland. It stinks when cut and cooked. And it’s now the hottest commodity in the produce aisle.
It’s cauliflower, baby. US sales of raw cauliflower and cauliflower-adjacent foods hit $700m last year, up almost 40% from 2016.
Cauliflower is the veggie equivalent of a blank canvas, and it’s low in carbs. So many amateur chefs are getting keto-curious that cauliflower items could fill an entire grocery aisle. There’s:
The trend is so strong that entire companies have popped up around the booming demand. You can declare your love of cauli-zza by wearing it on your chest, or join a curious campaign to create the caul-emoji.
Chipotle’s CEO said recently that the fast-food chain wants to make “the world’s greatest cauliflower rice.”
Occasional shortages have sent the price of a head skyrocketing, but farmers say cauliflower takes far less time to grow than other veggies, like tomatoes or peppers (about a month, vs. 70-100 days).
Cauliflower is even starting to sprout into Super Bowl-munchies territory. One pizza chain in the Northeast told The Wall Street Journal that cauliflower-crust pizzas account for 25% of all its pie sales.