Cauliflower cheese spaghetti | Jamie Oliver recipes (2024)

FAQs

Why does my cauliflower cheese sauce split? ›

Cook your cauliflower cheese at the right temperature, otherwise your cheese sauce can split. If your cheese sauce splits before that, it can be down to leaving it out too long, or you've boiled the sauce. If this happens, add a splash of milk or cream and whisk vigorously and it should come back to life.

Rustle up one of the greatest comfort foods: cauliflower cheese. It makes a perfect side dish or vegetarian main meal.

It can be made up to 3 days in advance and stored in the fridge until ready to cook. It is possible to freeze cauliflower cheese but unfortunately the sauce can sometimes turn thin and sligtly watery on defrosting, so we prefer not to freeze the dish if at all possible.

Carefully fill a large pot three-quarters of the way up with boiling water, add a tiny pinch of salt and bring back to the boil. Add the spaghetti and cook according to packet instructions – you want to cook your pasta until it is al dente.

Drain well

Make sure you drain the cauliflower really well after it's boiled up and before you add it to the dish, otherwise it will end up too watery.

For a cheese dip or sauce, the addition of cornstarch serves a similar function: Starch molecules absorb water and expand, not only thickening the liquid phase of the sauce, but also physically preventing the proteins from binding into long, tangled strands and the fats from separating out and pooling.

How long can you keep Cauliflower Cheese in the fridge? Once you've put it out, ideally you should eat it within 4 hours. If you allow any leftovers to cool, make sure to refrigerate in a container with a lid and chill. You can keep leftovers of Cauliflower Cheese in the fridge for approximately 3 days or so.

Ideally, we should all eat food straight after it has been cooked. This is when it's at its freshest and likely to taste the best. In terms of food safety, however, so long as you reheat the food at the correct temperature and for the correct duration of time, it can in fact be safely reheated multiple times.

We'd strongly recommend blanching cauliflower first, otherwise the high water content in the veg will turn it mushy if you freeze raw. To prevent deterioration of texture and nutritional value, it is best to partly cook (blanch) cauliflower florets before freezing. Wash the cauliflower and chop into equal size florets.

For the best spaghetti, cook it in salted water.

Pasta water should taste salty. I add a lot of salt to our pasta water (it makes the pasta taste delicious). I add about one tablespoon of salt for every four quarts (16 cups) of water, which is perfect for cooking one pound of pasta.

Do you simmer spaghetti covered or uncovered? ›

Give your pasta plenty of room to cook – so you want a large pan. Cover your pan with a lid to help bring the water up to the boil more quickly, then remove the lid once the water is boiling or reduce the temperature slightly to stop it bubbling over.

When pasta is cooked in water, its starch granules take on water, swell, soften and release some of the starches, Harold McGee writes in “On Food and Cooking.” “Salt in the cooking water not only flavors the noodles, but limits starch gelation and so reduces cooking losses and stickiness,” he says.

The Fix Is Simple—Add Water Back.

Here's how fix a broken sauce: Add about ¼ cup of water to the pan and reheat the sauce to a vigorous simmer, whisking constantly.

Once the "curds" begin to separate, the head is over mature. I'm fairly certain that although you think the weather has been mild, your cauliflower was ready to bolt - triggered either by the longer days of early summer or the heat. You may find that fall grown plants outperform spring plants in your location.

While cooking, keeping the heat low and slow can keep your sauce happy and together! Add a little fat back––a classic emulsified sauce is typically a 1:1 ratio of fat to liquid! If your sauce is breaking but is also very thin, vigorously whisking in a little fat (butter, egg yolk) can bring it around.