This recipe comes from David Grenier, published in Cottage Life magazine’s June/July 2020 issue — see the Buffalo cauliflower recipe on cottagelife.com. Rather than cutting the head into florets or steaks first, it grills the cauliflower whole, wrapped in foil on the grate, then finishes it with a buffalo baste.
Ingredients
Cauliflower and spice mix
- 1 head cauliflower, about 500 g, leaves removed and core trimmed
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon each: ground cumin, cayenne pepper, dry mustard, smoked paprika, salt
Buffalo sauce
- 1/3 cup vegan butter, melted
- 1/3 cup hot sauce (the recipe suggests Frank’s)
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
For serving
- 1 cup vegan ranch dressing, optional, for dipping
Grenier notes plain butter and regular ranch work fine as swaps if you don’t have the vegan versions on hand — but as written, with vegan butter and vegan ranch, the recipe is dairy-free throughout.
Grilling the Whole Head
- Preheat the grill to medium-high, about 400°F (204°C).
- Whisk together the spice mix ingredients — it will be slightly granular rather than smooth. Set the cauliflower head on a sheet of heavy-duty foil and brush it all over with the spice mix, working it into the nooks between the florets.
- Set the cauliflower and its foil sheet on the grill (the foil catches drippings and helps prevent flare-ups). Close the lid and grill for 30 minutes. Check on it, and rotate the foil if it’s cooking unevenly, then grill for another 25 minutes.
- Melt the vegan butter in a small saucepan on the barbecue’s side burner or on the stovetop, then whisk in the hot sauce, soy sauce and garlic powder until smooth. Baste the cauliflower head with the warm sauce and grill for a further 5 minutes. It’s done when a knife slides through it easily.
- Lift the cauliflower onto a cutting board with a sturdy metal spatula, then cut it into wedges or break it into florets. Serve with the reserved sauce on the side and the vegan ranch for dipping.
Total cook time runs about an hour, and it serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a side.
Getting Ahead of the Grill Time
An hour of grill time for one vegetable is a lot to ask on a busy night, so Grenier builds in a shortcut: par-cook the whole head first, either in a steamer basket over an inch of simmering water for 5 minutes, covered, or in the microwave in a covered glass bowl with a few vent holes pierced in the plastic wrap, for 4-5 minutes on high. Either method cuts the grill time down to 25-30 minutes total. The spice mix can also be made and brushed onto the cauliflower the day before and left covered in the fridge, so the only thing left to do once the grill is hot is cook it.
Why Grill It Whole Instead of in Florets
Keeping the head intact rather than breaking it into florets first means less surface area is exposed directly to the grate, so there’s less risk of losing pieces through the bars and less turning required overall — you’re mostly just rotating one large piece instead of managing a basket of small ones. The foil sheet underneath does double duty, both catching the buffalo baste as it drips and keeping flare-ups from the sugar and oil in the spice mix under control.
Checking the Sauce for Hidden Animal Ingredients
Because the recipe specifies plain “hot sauce (e.g., Frank’s)” rather than a pre-mixed buffalo wing sauce, it’s worth being precise about which bottle that means. McCormick, which owns the brand, lists the ingredients on its Frank’s RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce product page as: “Aged Cayenne Red Peppers, Distilled Vinegar, Water, Salt and Garlic Powder” — no dairy, honey or other animal-derived ingredients, so this base sauce is vegan on its own. That’s a different product from Frank’s premixed “Buffalo Wings Sauce,” which already has butter blended in and would work against the vegan butter this recipe calls for separately. If you’re shopping for the dish, look for the plain cayenne pepper sauce rather than a version marketed specifically as a “buffalo” or “wing” sauce, since those blended versions are the ones most likely to already contain dairy.
Keep reading
- Weber Spiced Cauliflower Steaks on the Grill
- Grilled Buffalo Chicken Wings: Weber’s Recipe and Origin
- Alton Brown’s Grilled Brussels Sprouts, Skewered
- Grilled Lemon-Ginger Tofu Steaks on the BBQ