Buffalo Cauliflower Pizza

This Buffalo Cauliflower Pizza is perfect for both vegetarians and buffalo chicken lovers! It’s topped with all the classic ingredients– celery, blue cheese and hot sauce– so you won’t even miss the chicken!

I’m kind of giddily excited about this recipe! So much so that I made it twice in two days. And secretly want to make it again already.

This pizza was inspired by an Instagram post of one of my childhood friends. She lives in Boston and is always going to bomb restaurants and posting delicious beer and food. Well, a month or so ago she posted a cauliflower pizza! No, no, not one of those weird cauliflower-crust “pizza” type thingies. A real, gluten- and carb-filled pizza topped with cauliflower. Since I loooove roasted cauliflower, and love pizza even more, I was totally drooling. I don’t even know the deets of what else was on the pizza but there was a swirl of spicy-looking sauce, so my mind immediately went buffalo.

I could bathe in Frank’s RedHot. Buffalo chicken and buffalo anything has always been a favorite of mine. In high school, I pretty much only ever ordered buffalo chicken sandwiches wherever they were on the menu. Back then I didn’t even like blue cheese. Now that I’m older and wiser, with a more refined palate, I love the stinky stuff. And so I might be even more in love with the buff.

The best part about this pizza? You won’t even know you’re eating extra veggies.

I made this one night when Nick was working late. I ate half the pizza myself and put the leftovers in the fridge. The next day I came back from my morning walk to find Nick eating the pizza for breakfast. This is so good! Good! Can you tell what’s on it? Nothing unordinary. Celery, chicken, blue cheese… Ah hah! Tricked! He couldn’t even detect my sneaky veggie substitute.

Truthfully I wasn’t actually trying to trick anyone with this pizza. It was meant to be a cauliflower pizza, not a fake chicken pizza. But it just goes to show, even the biggest carnivores will love this. I mean, you can’t really go wrong with blue cheese and hot sauce.

I was so bummed that my leftovers had been eaten that I immediately went to the store for more supplies to make a second pizza. Yep, I’m in love.

Since the baby keeps me busy, I used a premade pizza crust for this. But you could definitely make it homemade. It’d be even better that way, of course. I spread a thin layer of Ranch dressing (you could also use blue cheese) on the dough, then topped it with mozzarella, thinly sliced celery, blue cheese and roasted cauliflower tossed in buffalo sauce. I baked it to melty perfection, then just for fun I added a buffalo ranch swirl on top! Seriously, you need to make this.

Buffalo Cauliflower Pizza

 

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This Buffalo Cauliflower Pizza is perfect for both vegetarians and buffalo chicken lovers! It's topped with all the classic ingredients-- celery, blue cheese and hot sauce-- so you won't even miss the chicken!

Author: Jess

Recipe type: Entree

Cuisine: Pizza

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• ½ large head cauliflower
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• ¼ cup + 1 tbsp buffalo sauce (such as Frank's RedHot), divided
• 1 premade pizza crust (such as Boboli), or use homemade
• 3 tbsp Ranch or blue cheese dressing, divided
• 1½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 large stalk celery, thinly sliced
• ¼ cup blue cheese crumbles

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cut the cauliflower into medium-sized pieces. Toss with olive oil and spread on a baking sheet. Roast the cauliflower in the preheated oven about 25 minutes, until tender and beginning to brown.
3. Remove cauliflower from oven (leave oven on) and let cool slightly. Chop into small pieces, then toss with ¼ cup buffalo sauce and set aside.
4. Spread 2 tbsp Ranch dressing on the pizza crust, then sprinkle mozzarella evenly over top.
5. Top pizza with celery, cauliflower and blue cheese crumbles.
6. Bake pizza about 15 minutes until bubbly and beginning to brown (longer if you are using homemade or raw dough).
7. In a small Ziplock bag, combine remaining 1 tbsp of Ranch and 1 tbsp of buffalo sauce. Mix well, then snip off a corner of the bag and drizzle over pizza.

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