Fried Cauliflower (Vyprážaný Karfiol)
Ingredients: cauliflower, eggs, flour, bread crumbs, potatoes and vegetables for the side
Prep Time: 30 minutes
In this recipe, I show you how to make vyprážaný karfiol, meaning fried cauliflower. This is one of the most popular Slovak vegetarian dishes. It’s totally delicious and super easy to make! Just as with any dish involving frying, be careful when dealing with hot oil so you don’t burn yourself.
Start off by peeling potatoes and slicing them into cubes. Let them boil in salted water while you go about making the main dish. It’s so hard to believe that potatoes are relative newcomers to European cuisine. It seems that just about every Slovak dish starts with peeling potatoes…
Wash the cauliflower (karfiol) and separate into individual florets (ružičky). Bring a pot of salted water to boil and cook the pieces for about 2 minutes.
Then drain the water and let the cauliflower cool for few minutes. In the mean-time, prepare your “breading station”: a bowl of flour, a bowl of salted beaten eggs, and another bowl of bread crumbs. Heat up oil. A neat trick to check if the oil is hot enough is to drop a bread crumb into it. If the bread crumb starts sizzling, the oil is good to go. Coat each floret in the flour, in eggs and finally in the bread crumbs, and fry on each side for some 5 minutes.
Serve with mashed potatoes and side vegetables (obloha). To get that traditional home-cooked taste, top the mashed potatoes with little bit of oil from the frying pan. Yummie!
Serve with tatarska omacka… i love fried cauliflower (even if it’s quite a bit of work to prepare it), but it must be served with tatarska omacka 🙂
Oh yeah, I meant to say in the recipe that this is often served with tatarka (or ketchup, right?). But I like it plain like this; fried cauliflower has a very nice taste on its own, there is no need to mess it up with condiments 🙂
I admit, I am cutting on fried food. I used to make a lot of it, fried cauliflower was one of them and I liked it a lot. At this age I need to shed some weigh, and thus I am giving on frying. However, I still love cauliflower and thus I just steam it season it and it still tastes the great. 🙂
Oh BTW, my previous post was not saying “don’t fry” … God only knows how I love a fried food, however, if you are in the same predicamnet, age, weight, etc., steamed couliflower is pretty good substitute
Absolutely delicious and it was great meeting you! What fun to see the kitchen where you cook.
Miro, if you trying to cut on frying the food, I recommend steamed or boiled cauliflower and put panfried(without any fat, just plain breadcrumbs) breadcrumbs(I like making my own from baguettes or french or italian bread)on it and a little bit of melted butter.
What a vegetable this is. I love how versatile cauliflower is. I so tempted to try your recipe later this week (I have 3 heads of cauliflower waiting for me at home.) I will come back to your site and report on how your recipe turned out for sure! Would you like to take a look at my most recent cauliflower creation? http://cuceesprouts.com/2010/09/marinated-cauliflower-salad/
I love it! Its one of my favourite slovak dish…I love it with tatarska omacka and cucumber salad.
Delicious! Came across this site looking for recipes as I went out with a guy from Slovakia. He cooked the nicest vegetarian dishes for me, and fried cauliflower was my favourite!
Going to cook some myself for the first time later 🙂 Looking forward to trying other recipes.
Boiling is an extra step that is not needed.
Buy cracker crumbs instead of bread crumbs, or make your own putting Saltine crackers in a bag and rolling them with a rolling pin. Cracker crumbs take longer to brown than bread crumbs,and the cauliflower cooks through.
Love it with horst raddish sauce on top. Gives it an extra bite to it.
Hi Lubos, excellent web site! This is my all time favourite dish, going back wayyy in to my childhood.I serve this with cucumber (uhorkovy)salad,which is a must,and tartat sauce.Generally I hate frying anything,but I’m always ready to do this one.Thanks.
We do the same except not par-boil the cauliflower and pan fry in a bit of butter! Start with medium heat and turn your frypan down to med low.. To cook takes 15-20 minutes to finish up. This too is great… And it’s a veggie too!
Another treat that North Americans are missing out on!