A whole cauliflower, cut into three thick slabs, sitting on a tray with nothing on it but a bit of oil and salt. That’s how most people treat this vegetable and it’s why most people think cauliflower is boring. It isn’t boring. It’s under-seasoned and under-roasted, which is a different problem entirely, and today I’m going to fix both at once with roast cauliflower steaks, a proper tahini sauce and a dukkah that actually has some crunch left in it.
This is a dinner I put on the pass at a place out near Newcastle years ago, back when “vegetarian option” meant a sad risotto nobody ordered on purpose. We started doing cauliflower steaks with a decent char and a tahini dressing and it outsold the lamb rack two nights out of five. That told me something. People don’t want cauliflower to apologise for being cauliflower. They want it treated with the same respect you’d give a piece of fish: hot pan, proper seasoning, don’t walk away from it.
Why the steak cut matters
Cutting a cauliflower into steaks instead of florets changes the whole game, and not just for looks. You get a flat surface that sits properly in contact with a hot tray, which means actual caramelisation instead of the usual steamed-then-slightly-browned result you get from tossed florets rolling around. The core holds the slice together so you get a dense, almost meaty bite in the middle and crisp, nutty edges where the sugars have had a chance to really go dark.
Don’t muck about trying to get four steaks out of one head. You’ll get two decent ones from the centre and the rest falls apart into florets, which is fine, just roast those separately alongside, tucked in the gaps on the tray. Nothing wasted.
Getting the char right
Here’s where most home cooks lose this dish before it starts: the oven’s not hot enough and the tray’s overcrowded. You need the oven up at 220°C, tray preheated empty for ten minutes before anything touches it, and the steaks laid with actual space between them. Crowd the tray and you’re steaming, not roasting, and steamed cauliflower smells exactly the way it smells when you were seven and didn’t want to eat it.
I like to sear the cut faces in a hot pan first – a proper cast-iron one if you’ve got it – just ninety seconds a side to get colour going, then finish in the oven. It’s an extra step and I won’t pretend it isn’t, but it buys you a depth of flavour the oven alone takes twice as long to build, and on a Sunday when you’ve got the time, it’s worth it. On a Tuesday, skip the pan and just roast hot. Both work. One’s better.
The tahini sauce, done properly
Tahini seizes up the second lemon juice hits it – goes thick and claggy and looks like a mistake. It isn’t a mistake, it’s just tahini being tahini. Keep whisking and add water a tablespoon at a time and it’ll loosen back out into something silky within about a minute. If you give up halfway through because it looks wrong, you’ll end up with a sauce like wallpaper paste, and that’s on you, not the tahini.
A good hulled tahini makes a real difference here: the Lebanese and Middle Eastern brands you’ll find at most Australian delis and plenty of supermarkets now are generally smoother and less bitter than the raw, unhulled stuff from the health food aisle. I’ve got no issue with unhulled tahini for other jobs, but for a sauce you want this silky, go hulled.
Dukkah worth making yourself
Shop-bought dukkah’s fine in a pinch but it goes stale in the cupboard faster than you’d think, and the texture’s usually all dust and no crunch. Toasting your own hazelnuts, cumin and coriander seeds takes about six minutes and the difference in a dish this simple is not subtle. Crush it coarse, not to a powder. You want to actually feel the pistachio and sesame when you bite down, not just taste a vague spice note.
This recipe sits comfortably alongside the sort of thing we talk about in warming autumn meals that still feel light – hearty without being heavy, and genuinely vegetable-forward rather than vegetables-as-afterthought.
Ingredients
- 2 large cauliflowers, leaves trimmed, cut through the core into 2cm thick steaks (you’ll get roughly 2 good steaks per head plus florets)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- Sea salt and cracked black pepper
- ⅓ cup (90g) hulled tahini
- Juice of 1 large lemon
- 1 small garlic clove, finely grated
- 3-4 tbsp cold water
- 2 tbsp raw hazelnuts
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 1 tbsp pistachios, roughly chopped
- ¼ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly torn
- Pomegranate molasses, to finish (optional but good)
Method
- Preheat the oven to 220°C and put a heavy baking tray in to heat up empty.
- Toss the cauliflower steaks and leftover florets with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, cumin, smoked paprika, salt and pepper, coating well on both sides.
- Carefully pull the hot tray out, lay the cauliflower on with space between pieces, and roast for 25-30 minutes, turning once, until deeply golden and tender through to the centre when pierced with a knife.
- While that’s going, toast the hazelnuts, sesame seeds, cumin seeds and coriander seeds in a dry pan over medium heat for 4-5 minutes, shaking often, until fragrant and the hazelnuts have some colour. Tip onto a board, cool slightly, then roughly crush with the side of a knife or a mortar and pestle. Stir through the chopped pistachios. This is your dukkah.
- Whisk the tahini with lemon juice and garlic in a bowl – it will seize and go thick. Keep whisking while adding cold water a tablespoon at a time until it loosens into a pourable, smooth sauce. Season with salt.
- Spread the tahini sauce over a serving platter, lay the roasted cauliflower steaks and florets on top, scatter generously with dukkah and parsley, and finish with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses if using.
Serves 4 as a main, or 6 as a side.
What to put alongside it
On its own with a decent green salad this is a complete dinner, but if you want more substance I’d put it over a warm grain: the sort of thing we do in our warm grain bowl with roasted roots and labne, or alongside a protein if that’s what the table wants. A few of the soba noodle bowl crowd have told me it works well served the way we plate the soba noodle bowl with sesame greens, with extra greens tossed through sesame oil on the side.
If you’re feeding a mixed table where someone always wants meat, this sits fine next to a simply grilled chicken thigh or the ocean trout from our ocean trout with ginger and coriander recipe. Nobody’s going to feel short-changed eating the cauliflower as their main event though. That’s the point of roasting it properly in the first place.
A variation worth trying
Swap the smoked paprika for a decent curry powder and finish with coriander instead of parsley, and you’ve got a different dish entirely without changing the technique. I’d also have a crack at using tahini with a bit of harissa whisked through if you want more heat: start with half a teaspoon, taste, and go from there. Don’t dump in a whole tablespoon because you’re impatient; harissa brands vary wildly in strength and you can’t take it back out once it’s in.
Nutrition Australia and the CSIRO’s dietary guidelines both point the same direction for Australian dinners generally: more vegetables taking up more of the plate, protein in a supporting role rather than the headline act. A dish like this one, built around a whole vegetable roasted properly and dressed with real flavour, does that without feeling like a compromise. You can read more on the general approach via eatforhealth.gov.au or Nutrition Australia if you want the detail behind the guidelines.
Where this fits in the week
I’ll be honest, I think cauliflower gets a worse rap than it deserves purely because most people boil it into submission and call it a day. Roasted hard and dressed properly, it holds its own against meat on flavour and texture both, and it’s cheap: a head of cauliflower from most greengrocers runs a few dollars, which makes this one of the better value dinners you’ll cook this month. It also reheats well the next day, tahini sauce and all, so don’t feel you need to finish the whole platter in one sitting.
Get your tray properly hot, don’t crowd it, and taste the tahini sauce before you add the last tablespoon of water – sometimes it doesn’t need it. That’s really the whole lesson here.
– Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen
