Hi guys! Hope you're well. So me and Tesco are really hero-ing veg this Christmas.
So I've got an amazing cauliflower cheese recipe for you that's got the most amazing sauce
with smoky bacon, spring onion, and cheddar cheese and red Leicester.
It's awesome, it's delicious, and people will fight over it.
So it all starts here with our humble cauliflower. Cut it in half, nice and carefully,
and then into quarters like that, and then we're gonna blanch it. So blanching
means just to basically like half cook it. Now notice we're not wasting anything.
The leaves are amazing. They're sweet, they're delicious. The core - that often
gets thrown away - nothing wrong with that. So here I've got a pan of salted boiling water.
I'm gonna take my whole cauliflower like this, in the water it goes. Two big cauliflowers here.
This will be enough to feed ten or twelve people.
So lid goes on top and I'm gonna blanch that for around 15 minutes,
a perfect time for making a really delicious creamy white sauce.
So it starts here with smoky bacon. Just four rashers. Finely slice that into little lardons.
Of course if you want to do a vegetarian version, no problem at all, simply don't use it.
Break up the smoky bacon. It's already frying nicely. We want to get that nice and golden.
Now I'm using spring onions for delicious sweet gorgeous flavour,
but also they don't need much cooking, so it's a quick sauce and it's gonna
blow your friends' minds. It's gonna be so good. We're just gonna remove that funky little end,
and then bunch them up together and just kind of do the best that you can to finely slice them.
If there's some chunks in there it really doesn't matter.
So the spring onions go in. Look at that! Mix it up. They smell amazing.
I'm gonna go in with 50 grams of butter, it melts really quickly, and then
I'm gonna add 120 grams, which is about 4 tablespoons, of plain flour and that's
going to create your thickening agent to make that lovely milky sauce thick and
creamy and delicious. Fry it off a little bit and then I'm gonna slowly stir in
1.2 litres of milk, but you can't rush the milk in because it will just go very lumpy.
It already smells very good. Can you see how the texture's changing?
As it's starting to take it I can just go a little bit faster, and as that comes up
to a simmer that'll thicken. It will go nice and shiny and you know cheese sauce
which is essentially what we're gonna make,
is very very common, often comes out of a packet, but this is gonna be another level.
It's Christmastime so we want to make the best cauliflower cheese ever,
so I'm gonna use cheddar and red Leicester, which I absolutely love.
So around about 200 grams of cheese in total, but you do whatever blend you want to do.
If you've got odds and ends in the fridge you can use that as well.
At this point if you look over here, it's shiny. Turn it off and then we can put in our cheese.
So get the cheese in and then the one last ingredient that is an absolute must
is two teaspoons of English mustard. This sauce would not be the same without it.
So good. Oh! Look at that colour. That is a dreamy cauliflower cheese sauce.
It's amazing with cauliflower but really good with broccoli and sprouting broccoli as well.
If you toss that with pasta, even mac and cheese, come on!
Merry Christmas! This is a very very good sauce. So at this stage in the game
let's have a little drain up. It's like a sauna! And then we go straight over to the sauce.
Now what I want is a nice dish that you would be proud to put in the middle of the table.
Here just carefully toss the lovely cauliflower in the sauce. Look at that!
It might break up but please don't worry, and then grab it and put it straight in that dish.
Look at that! Just pour on all that amazing sauce. So I like to move the cauliflower around
so the flowery side faces up. Final flurry of red Leicester on the top.
Now look, it's Christmas. It's a very stressful time of year. You want this year to be the best one ever.
You can do this one or two days before Christmas Day, but when you go to cook it you bang it in the oven
at 180 degrees Celsius for one hour. It will blip, it will go gnarly, it will gratinate,
it will be the most incredible thing. Don't even judge this now because what
happens when it bakes is just pure magic. It will smell incredible and when that
turkey is resting, that's your golden hour to get that in the oven.
Beautiful. Right, one hour and then I'll show ya.
There you go. Look at that! Let's get it out. Oh ha ha! That is a thing of beauty.
So it's gone gnarly around the edges, you got blippin' thick, beautiful cheesy sauce.
Love it! Love it, love it, love it! Putting that in the middle of the table is gonna be amazing.
Right let's have a little try. Let's get in there.
It's hot! Ohh. It's good.
I've just burnt my mouth but it's so tasty it was worth it.
That is so tasty. People will go back for more.
So guys what you waiting for? Get down to Tesco, get the ingredients, get the recipe,
have a cook up and you will love this! Enjoy!
Happy Christmas and welcome to the best cauliflower cheese ever.