This cauliflower alfredo recipe combines shrimp, pasta, veggies, and a rich, creamy sauce that coats it all for a delicious, quick, and guilt-free comfort food.
Is Cauliflower Alfredo Healthy?
Foods made with cream like alfredo can be high in calories and have loads of saturated fat. When overly salted, they can contain plenty of sodium as well.
All of these factors can be moderated as long as you’re watching your portions and using the ingredients efficiently. As your trustworthy healthy recipe developer, we’ve got these covered:
- We used a reasonable amount of shrimp, pasta, and sauce so each portion is filling but provides just around 463 calories, 17-22% the recommended daily total.
- We substituted some of the dairy products with cauliflower to maintain the sauce’s thickness without raising the saturated fat level. It is rich, silky, flavorful, and contains just 8.3 g saturated fat per serving — 27-36% the suggested limit.
- We were generous with the seasonings but included only a moderate amount of salt. Each serving now contains 24.3% of what’s suggested.
To learn more about these recommendations, have a look at our dietary guidelines.
Homemade Alfredo Sauce With Cauliflower
Traditional alfredo is a white sauce made of butter, milk, cream, broth, parmesan cheese, and additional seasonings. To make its cauliflower alfredo cousin, we cooked these ingredients with the titular white vegetable, then blended everything until smooth using our food processor.
You might find it a tiny bit runnier than the original alfredo, but this shouldn’t affect your overall experience. In return, the sauce takes on an appetizing fragrance from cauliflower, which we think you’ll love.
How to Thicken Alfredo Sauce
The sauce’s thickness is inherited from heavy cream and cheese. But since we don’t use a lot of them for health reasons, we often thicken sauces with roux.
In our chicken alfredo recipe, we made the roux by cooking flour in butter until its raw taste fades away. Then, the liquids are gradually added and constantly stirred in, giving us a thick sauce.
We’ll show you how to implement roux into this recipe in the next section.
How to Make Cauliflower Alfredo Pasta
Cook cauliflower with sauce ingredients, then blend until smooth.
Season and sear the shrimp.
Cook the veg.
Add the sauce, shrimp, and cooked pasta. Stir.
Garnish and serve.
To include a roux, once the vegetables are cooked, add about 2 tbsp of all-purpose flour and stir for 2 minutes to cook off its raw taste. Then, gradually pour in the sauce you made earlier while constantly stirring to avoid lumps. This step is only necessary if you want your pasta sauce to be super thick.
We boiled water before step 1 so that when we finished with the veg, we’d already have cooked pasta. Cook it for the lower amount of time mentioned in the package instructions.
If you want to include more cauliflower in your diet, this Kung Pao Cauliflower or Chicken and Cauliflower are lovely options.
Tips for Better Cauliflower Alfredo Pasta
For dishes like pasta that require forks or chopsticks, large shrimp are the better choice, as they’re more presentable.
In terms of pasta choice, feel free to use fettuccine, spaghetti, or angel hair. We used spaghetti out of preference.
Our vegetables are the basics: mushrooms and green peas. For some bonus vitamins, you can boil some spinach, squeeze it dry, and add it to the pasta as well.
What to Do With Leftover Alfredo Sauce
Alfredo sauce can obviously be saved to make pasta again, but in case you don’t want to, here are some of its other uses.
For starters, it’s great for spinach or artichoke dip. The soft veg is first boiled to soften, then baked in a white sauce. Replace that standard sauce with this one for some awesome new flavors.
Potato gratin also bakes potatoes in a creamy, flavorful sauce for which our cauliflower alfredo is a great substitute.
In short, this is a healthier, more flavorful replacement for white sauces in pizzas, soups, casseroles and more. It also pairs phenomenally well with garlic bread as a dip.
What We Serve With Cauliflower Alfredo Pasta
As usual, we temper the pasta’s rich flavors with a fresh salad, and this time, we landed on a kale salad. It combines leafy greens, juicy fruits, and crunchy nuts to bring you a treat that nurtures the body and pleases the palate.
Tying off the meal is a glass of lime watermelon juice, a tangy and sweet beverage made of nothing but fresh produce. It’s one of our most delicious, aromatic ways to complete the healthy meal you deserve.
More Delicious Cauliflower Ideas!
Here are some easy and delicious cauliflower meals that we just couldn’t help but fall in love with:
- Cauliflower Fried Rice Recipe
- Buffalo Cauliflower Tacos Recipe
- Cauliflower Toast Recipe
- Cauliflower Manchurian Recipe (Gobi Manchurian)
- Cauliflower Pizza Crust Recipe
Cauliflower Alfredo Recipe
This cauliflower alfredo recipe asks for just 25 minutes of your time and returns a rich, luscious pasta with shrimp and vegetables — a sweet dream in disguise.
- cook TIME 20 mins
- prep TIME 5 mins
- total TIME 25 mins
- COURSE Main Course
- CUISINE Global
- SERVINGS servings
- CALORIES 463 kcal
INGREDIENTS
- 14 ozcauliflower (divided into 10 and 4)
- 1 cupunsalted chicken broth
- 0.5 cupwhole milk
- 4 tbspheavy cream
- 0.8 ozparmesan (shredded, divided in half)
- 0.5 tspsalt
- 6 ozpeeled shrimp (about 16 large, from 10 oz raw shrimp)
- 0.5 tsppaprika
- 0.5 tspItalian seasoning
- 0.5 tbspolive oil
- 1.5 tbspunsalted butter (or 0.75 oz, divided into 1 and 1/2 tbsp)
- 8 ozbrown mushrooms (sliced)
- 4 ozonion (about 1 medium, finely chopped)
- 1 tbspgarlic (about 3 cloves, minced)
- 4 ozgreen peas (frozen or fresh)
- 16 ozcooked fettuccine (from about 11 oz dry)
- 2 tbspparsley (freshly chopped)
- 0.3 tspground black pepper
INSTRUCTIONS
Boil some water for the pasta. To a separate saucepan, add 10 oz cauliflower, 1 cup unsalted chicken broth, 1/2 cup milk, 4 tbsp heavy cream, 0.75 oz parmesan, and 1/2 tsp salt. Cook for 7 minutes on low heat. When finished, blend the mixture until smooth and set aside. Add the pasta (about 10 oz) to the boiling water, and set the timer according to the package instructions.
While the cauliflower's cooking, heat a non-stick pan over medium heat; add to it 1/2 tbsp olive oil and 1/2 tbsp butter. Coat 6 oz peeled shrimp with 1/2 tsp paprika and 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning, then sear it in the hot oil for 2 minutes (1 minute per side). Move the shrimp to a clean bowl and set aside. Check the pasta and drain.
In the hot pan, melt the remaining butter (1 tbsp) and sauté 8 oz sliced mushrooms, 4 oz chopped onions, and 1 tbsp minced garlic over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Then, add 4 oz green peas along with the remaining cauliflower (4 oz) and stir for another 2 minutes. If using frozen green peas, cook for an additional 2 minutes.
Add the sauce made in step 1 and stir. Add 16 oz cooked pasta and seared shrimp, stir for about 2 minutes or until everything is coated in sauce, and turn off the heat.
Sprinkle the rest of the parm (0.25 oz), 2 tbsp chopped parsley, and 1/4 tsp ground pepper on top. Enjoy.
NUTRITION
Tuyet Pham
Chef, Culinary Consultant
Luna Regina
Writer, Author
Lizzie Streit, MS, RDN, LD
Nutrition Reviewer