Bad Caul
I went in to a Buffalo Wild Wings yesterday, and I saw an unanticipated item on the menu that I should have expected: Cauliflower wings.
Let me just say it likes it is: cauliflower doesn’t taste like chicken. Cauliflower doesn’t taste like bread, or rice, or pizza dough, or any of the myriad things Big Cauliflower tries to convince us it tastes like.
Cauliflower tastes like death. And it looks like death too.
Actually, it doesn’t necessarily look like death. It looks as though some alien giant popped a blackhead. Or maybe it looks more like some sort of albino brain, but whatever it does look like, it looks bad, and Lord knows it tastes bad.
Cauliflower is 92% water , which is amazing, because water kind of has a neutral taste while cauliflower tastes horrible. Perhaps the 5% of cauliflower that is carbohydrate or the 2% of it that is protein catalyzes the vile flavor profile, but whatever causes it one thing is sure: the putrid taste of cauliflower somehow transcends the sum of its parts.
It shouldn’t taste as bad as it does, but it does
I know, I know, taste is subjective and some people like cauliflower, especially if it isn’t raw ( I can’t imagine most people like raw cauliflower, but hey, some people like AMC Gremlins so….) . So, just for the hell of it I looked up some cauliflower recipes and they are mostly loaded with spices, cheeses, oils, etc. What I mean is that it seems like most cauliflower recipes are designed to HIDE and not to ACCENTUATE the taste of…cauliflower.
It seems bad form to cook things with the intention of hiding the taste of a main ingredient, but in the case of cauliflower, I get it.
So, cauliflower people, let’s stop pretending that cauliflower makes for a delicious substitute for other food products. I understand that it is gluten free so it is better than nothing for the gluten sensitive- but better than nothing doesn’t equate to good. I understand that it is high in certain nutrients- but so are multivitamins.
What I DON’T understand is how cauliflower is saturating menus, and I don’t understand it for one reason: cauliflower is gross