Ina Garten Tops Her Toast With This Criminally Underrated Vegetable

From her brilliant, time-saving cauliflower-cutting tips to her recipes, there's one thing we know about Ina Garten for sure: She knows her vegetables. Cauliflower used to get some flak for being a bland vegetable, but it holds lots of potential, especially if you know how to best utilize it. Who better than the Barefoot Contessa to make this seemingly dull veggie shine? In an Instagram post, Garten shared some tips for making cauliflower open-faced sandwiches.

"I think cauliflower is a highly under-appreciated vegetable," Garten said in the caption. She shared a picture of cauliflower-topped toasts and added, "I combine [cauliflower] with gruyere and pancetta on top of crusty bread to make an open-faced sandwich that's crunchy, creamy, and totally decadent! Everyone goes crazy for these!"

The recipe, available on her website, also includes sliced prosciutto and minced chives, seasoned with red pepper flakes, paprika, nutmeg, and salt. As for the cauliflower, it isn't added raw. According to her recipe, she chops off the florets and roasts them in the oven before seasoning.

Toast isn't the only thing Ina Garten uses cauliflower for. In fact, if you look at her website, she's used it for lots of cool recipes. There's one for cauliflower gratin, a staple in French cuisine, which Garten fell in love with after trying one dish. Instead of roasting the cauliflower, though, she boils it before baking the dish altogether. She seems to think that cauliflower goes well with Gruyere cheese, because she also includes it in this gratin recipe.

If you already enjoy cauliflower, then Garten has another recipe that's probably more suited to your tastes. Dubbed "Roasted Cauliflower Snowflakes," this dish proves that roasted cauliflower all on its own can be a (somewhat) healthy snack to keep you full. To make, roast some sliced cauliflower with olive oil, panko, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. Unlike the open-faced sandwiches, you can use more than the florets for this dish. Garten suggests cutting the whole cauliflower and letting it fall apart, so that the resulting slices imitate the shape of a snowflake.