Are you on a low-carb diet but crave some delicious sushi today? Here’s a brilliant alternative to sushi rice that will surprise you: sticky cauliflower rice. Let us show you how to make it!
Riced cauliflower is a popular low-carb rice substitute in the keto diet. We especially love it because it’s a fun way to eat more veggies and have a grain-free option when you’ve hit your daily carb allowance.
If you have never made cauliflower rice before, you may wonder: how do you turn a whole cauliflower into rice? Simple: grate or blitz the tender florets into bits until they look like white rice grains. Easy!
Now, turning riced cauliflower into sticky rice is a little trickier as cauliflower doesn’t have any starch to bind the “grains” as regular rice does. But don’t worry, we sorted it out!
Many recipes use cream cheese to bind the cauliflower rice and make it sticky. But we wanted to use an ingredient that is also vegan, low in calories and neutral-tasting. And that ingredient is agar agar!
What’s that? Agar agar is a natural gelling agent derived from red algae, commonly found as a powder. It activates when cooked and sets when cooled — just like gelatine but plant-based!
You may have seen agar agar in dessert recipes like puddings and cheesecakes, and you can now use it to make cauliflower sushi rice too. It works wonders!
In the recipe below, we’ll show you how to cook agar agar and add it to steamed riced cauliflower to prepare sushi rice. Make sure you follow our instructions carefully and work fast, as agar agar sets quickly.
Once the sticky rice is sorted, have fun making your low-carb sushi rolls, nigiri, and onigiri. The default ingredients yield enough cauliflower sushi rice for 1 serving of maki rolls, about 8 medium hosomaki.
And if you’re looking for some sushi ideas to put your low-carb sticky rice into action, check out these tofu crunchy rolls, mango maki, and kombu onigiri — all delicious!