Today’s lunch was awesome. After starting with my paleo diet, I have been missing some dishes and one among them is ven pongal. Here is my attempt at making ven pongal into a paleo dish with cauliflower rice. Cauliflower is a great boon for all those are avoiding rice in their diet. Either grate it or process it in food processor and you will get it in the consistency of rice. You can then cook it in microwave or steam cook it to get the rice like texture. And this rice can be had with any gravy of your choice or can be made into any favourite dish.
As we can’t have sambar in paleo, I made a simple spicy tomato chutney to go with it. With the ghee fried almonds and pepper, the final dish tasted so much like ven pongal and we just loved it. I even made some curd rice with the cauliflower and it made a filling meal this noon. Will write about the curd rice in another post. For now enjoy the pongal recipe.
Ingredients:
Cauliflower – 1 medium
Ghee- 2 tbs
Almonds – 5
Cashew nuts – 5
Whole Black Peppercorns – 1 tbs
Curry Leaves – 1-2 sprigs
Cumin Seeds – 1 tsp
Salt To Taste
Procedure:
Cut off the florets.
Either grate them or process in a food processor until they are fine.
Take the rice and mix salt to taste.
Place it in a MW safe bowl and cook on high for 6-7 minutes or until it is soft.
In a pan, heat ghee and add chopped nuts, cumin seeds and peppercorns.
When the nuts are brown, add the curry leaves.
Once they crackle, add it to the prepared rice.
Give a nice mix and serve immediately with tomato chutney.

Cauliflower Ven Pongal Recipe
Ingredients
Ingredients
- Cauliflower - 1 medium
- Ghee- 2 tbs
- Almonds - 5
- Cashew nuts - 5
- Whole Black Peppercorns - 1 tbs
- Curry Leaves - 1-2 sprigs
- Cumin Seeds - 1 tsp
- Salt To Taste
Instructions
Procedure
- Cut off the florets.
- Either grate them or process in a food processor until they are fine.
- Take the rice and mix salt to taste.
- Place it in a MW safe bowl and cook on high for 6-7 minutes or until it is soft.
- In a pan, heat ghee and add chopped nuts, cumin seeds and peppercorns.
- When the nuts are brown, add the curry leaves.
- Once they crackle, add it to the prepared rice.
- Give a nice mix and serve immediately with tomato chutney.
Really nice recipe.. Cauliflower pongal is my regular recipe for last one year.
[…] thru some blogs that are into keto/paleo recipes and finally checked Gayathri Kumar blog for her cauliflower pongal and tried it again. Voila, nailed the recipe this […]