These Cauliflower Fritters with Feta Cheese make for great bites or even a main meal on Meatless Mondays. It makes me happy to see how many veggies I can fit inside. Recipe is easily adaptable to whatever leftover vegetables you have at home. Also, these cauliflower fritters can be pan fried or air fried. (In Albanian they’re called qofte me lulelaker)
Not Another Cauliflower Recipe, Right?
I am sure you have all seen at least one of those memes on internet that say something like If Cauliflower can become pizza …! And yes, food trends like fashion trends tend to pick up an ingredient or a color and run with it until everyone gets tired from it.
However, where I come from, cauliflower is a beloved vegetable especially in winter time. We make salads with it, soups etc. And because it’s seasonal, you never get tired of it and wait for it to be back in season eagerly next year.
In the Mediterranean we make meatballs (in my native language of Albanian we call them qofte or in Greek keftedes) with ground beef but also with vegetables like zucchini, cauliflower and even rice. I guess in English they are more commonly known as fritters when they’re meatless since the word meatballs includes the word meat in it.
Methods for Cooking Fritters
The usual methods for cooking veggie fritters are:
- Fried in a skillet covered in oil (traditional)
- Air Fried (popular since Air Fryers swept the market).
- Baked
I personally prefer these cauliflower fritters air fried. My air fryer is a combo toaster oven/air fryer so it’s not the typical air fryer with a basket.
When I first tried this recipe, I fried the cauliflower fritters in avocado oil. Taste was amazing!! However, I needed to add more flour to the mix so the fritters would hold together. These fritters have a lot of vegetables and when you mix them together, the dough will be very wet. You need a binding agent to hold it together. So you would need more flour to hold the fritters together when frying. See short video on TikTok of the pan fried version of these cauliflower fritters.
While if you air fry them, you don’t need so much flour and the fritters will hold the shape without breaking apart.
Tips and Notes
Here are some of my tips for this recipe.
- If you have a blender with pulse function, you can pulse together the cauliflower, carrots and celery. Pulse function makes sure that these vegetables will be chopped or minced really fine but not pureed.
- I love adding two types of onions: green onions and red onions. However, if you only have one type it’s totally ok.
- Use fresh garlic, mince it really fine.
- I love feta cheese. However, not everyone does so you can substitute feta cheese with halloumi cheese. I have even tried this recipe with Jarlsberg cheese because we buy a lot of it every month.
- You can add some spinach to the mix as well and kids won’t even know it:). Feel free to try this recipe with other vegetables like zucchini etc.
- Bread crumbs – feel free to use store bought bread crumbs. I tend to use stale bread and freeze it. Whenever I need bread crumbs, I pulse some frozen stale bread.
Cauliflower Fritters with Feta Cheese
Equipment
- 1 Blender It's best to use a blender with pulse function
Ingredients
- 4 cups cauliflower florets
- 2 egg
- 0.5 cup carrots
- 2 celery stocks
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 0.5 cup bread crumbs
- 0.25 cup all purpose flour
- 0.5 cup feta cheese
- 4-5 green onions
- 0.5 red onion
- pinch salt adjust to taste, amount will vary on type of feta you are using.
- 0.25 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp oregano
- 0.5 cup fresh parsley
- pinch red pepper flakes (optional) add for spice
- 2 garlic cloves
Instructions
- Pulse in a blender cauliflower, carrots, celery, garlic and place on a mixing bowl. If vegetables have too much liquid, you can squeeze them with a cheesecloth to remove some of the moisture.
- Bread crumbs – pulse stale bread separately or use store bought bread crumbs. Add breadcrumbs over veggies on the mixing bowl. Add eggs, feta cheese, chopped parsley, oregano, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and olive oil.
- Chop red onion and green onions as fine as you can, add those to the bowl as well. Finally add flour over everything.
- Mix everything well with a wooden spoon until you get a homogenous dough.
- Use an ice cream scoop to create equal patties. Press with your hands to shape properly. I wouldn't make them too thick since it's harder to cook properly.
- Place patties on the tray and air fry at 400 degrees F for about 20 minutes. depending on the type of air fryer you use this timing might slightly change so keep an eye on the fritters.
- Serve with your favorite dip. I love serving them with a yogurt based dip (add either mint, dill or cilantro to dip according to taste). Enjoy!
Notes
- Frying – if frying them on a pan, use the flour to coat the outside of the patties. Then fry them. Don’t flip until you see the edges become golden brown. I prefer avocado oil for frying.
- Air-Frying – Add the flour as part of the dough mix. Create patties and place them on the baking tray (my air fryer doubles as a toaster oven so it has a small baking tray instead of basket).
- Storing – store the cauliflower fritters in an airtight container in the refrigerator for few days if you have leftovers. Warm them up to serve again when ready.
- Depending on size of air fryer, you might have to cook two batches.
Nutrition Label
Nutrition
Cauliflower fritters are usually low carb but because they have a bit of flour and bread crumbs, they are not keto. By air frying them, I tend to add less flour to the mix so less carbs. If you want to make them keto, replace regular flour with almond flour or a keto flour mix.
Yes you can. More specifically for my recipe you can omit the egg and feta cheese.
I serve them as quick bites after school and before kids afternoon sports. They make for great bites served with tzatziki or this yogurt/cilantro dip. You can also make them for dinner for meatless Mondays.
If you would like to save this recipe for later, please pin the below image to your boards in Pinterest. Let me know in comments below if you have any questions or feel free to tag me in social media with your rendition of this recipe:). Thank you!!
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Additional Mediterranean Recipes
Feel free to check some of my other Mediterranean recipes:
Alma
Just fantastic, reminds of a recipe my grandma used to make with cauliflower & eggs called ‘qofte me lulelakër’. Love your recipes 😍!