This Thai Prawns With Cauliflower Rice is a super delicious lighter meal, packed with flavour, ready on the table in under 20 minutes AND under 300 cals.
OMG! I first made this recipe back in 2014 whilst I was still working in an office job! It was one of those recipes I hoped would help me not to put on 10 stone when I left the office job and started working 5 foot away from the refrigerator (I succeeded btw – still the same weight as when I left!).
I really wanted to update this recipe, as it’s been on the blog so long! The pictures were awful, and it just didn’t seem right considering I make this dish fairly often.
So when I started re-shooting this, Chris and I realised it would be a perfect recipe to start off our 20 Minute Tuesdays video series!!
A new series showing you how you can make tasty meals in 20 minutes or less. Check out our first video below and follow along with the recipe. You can subscribe to our You Tube channel here
FYI – I’ve mostly left the ‘chatter’ part of this blog post alone – as I like to write snippets of my life in my blog posts. I figured it’s nice to leave those bits in there to act a bit like a diary. So here’s my post from 2014:
Cauliflower is hugely underrated in my opinion. Yes, they have a tendency to be a bit boring and stinky when steamed on their own (fine by me with a drizzle of gravy!), but they’re so versatile.
- Baked with cream and cheese on the side of your roast dinner
- Added to a stir fry with garlic and soy sauce
- Eaten raw added to salads
- As a pizza base substitute mixed with egg and mozzarella (haven’t tried this yet – is it good?)
- As a creamy sauce substitute. Lindsay from ‘Pinch of yum’ does this extremely well here and has even written a book on it!
- And finally ……as a really low cal, low carb substitute for rice
Yes, that’s what I’m doing here today. Ok, it doesn’t taste exactly like rice. But it doesn’t taste like grated cauliflower either! It’s had the ‘it’s not too bad actually’ seal of approval from my wary husband (which is definitely a compliment when it comes to healthy meals).
I’ve mixed it with a large handful of chopped coriander and a squirt of lime in this recipe, which really lifts the flavour. Add in the creamy, saucy prawns, and it’s hard to believe you’ve got a tasty, satisfying meal on the table for less than 250 calories! A great option if you’re doing the 5:2 diet (which I do occasionally).
It’s so good, I made it twice last week. One of those times was for my mum, who then took the recipe home and fed it to my dad a couple of days later (and he thought it was great too).
I’ve added this into my ‘Skinny Eats’ category (check out some of my others such as spicy breakfast eggs or cheesy butternut squash soup<–two more old posts with awful photos – I must get around to updating those too!). This is definitely a new staple meal to give my diet a bit of balance against the numerous biscuits, cakes and puddings I tend to make.
I haven’t really talked about it on my blog yet, but I’ll be leaving work in a few weeks to give me some more time with the kids, and to spend more time on my blog and other writing interests. One of my concerns, it that I’ll be spending my time in an endless cycle of cooking and eating. The refrigerator is just too close when I’m at home. So I need some lighter meals like this to stop myself putting on 10 stone within the first month….
More about me leaving work in a future post, I promise. Now, onto the recipe.
In this recipe I use this shop bought Thai Curry Paste, however if you wanted to make your own I have done that here for my healthier red Thai chicken curry.
Thai Prawns With Cauliflower Rice Recipe:
Thai Prawns with Cauliflower rice
Ingredients
- 16 king prawns deveined and washed (approx 160g)
- 300 g cauliflower about 1 large head, grated
- 1 clove of garlic peeled and minced
- 1 small (1cm cube) piece of ginger peeled and finely chopped
- 40 g Red Thai curry paste I use ‘Thai Taste’
- 50 g coconut cream
- 6 tbsps water
- 1 tsp fish sauce usually gluten free, but check this if you are gluten intolerant
- 1 tsp sugar
- 20 sprays of one-cal-per-spray cooking oil
- Regular bunch of coriander
- Juice of 1 lime
- Half of a small red chilli
- good pinch of salt and pepper
Instructions
- Put your prawns on skewers and spray with half of the cooking spray. Heat up a griddle pan and a large frying pan.
- Spray a small pan with two sprays of cooking spray and add in the garlic and ginger. Cook on a low heat for two minutes. Add in the Thai curry paste and stir for 30 seconds, then add in the coconut cream, water, fish sauce, sugar and half of the lime juice. Bring to a gentle bubble. Take a pastry brush and brush a little of the sauce onto the raw prawns. Leave on a low heat, and add a little more water if it starts to look too dry.
- Spray the remaining cooking spray into the large frying pan and add in your grated cauliflower. Cook for a few minutes, turning with a spatula to prevent burning.
- As your cauliflower is cooking, put the prawns on the griddle to cook. Cook for about 2 minutes on each side until they turn pink.
- Add the coriander, remaining lime juice and a good pinch of salt and pepper to the cauliflower. Give it all a good stir. It should be starting to brown just a little bit on a few places which means it’s ready.
- Dish up the cauliflower between serving places, and top with the prawn skewers. Drizzle the remaining Thai sauce over the top and sprinkle on the chopped red chillies, then serve!
Recipe Video
Nutritional Information
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Nicola says
This recipe is amazing! Thank you. Nom nom nom. But I didn’t do skewers, I put prawns in the pan to cook in the sauce, then also added muchrooms, baby corn and sugar snap peas and surged on top of the cauli rice.
KRIS says
I’m doing a cal controlled diet at the moment and this recipe was absolutely perfect. Full of flavour and I was surprised how the cauliflower rice actually tasted. 5***** from me 🙂
Sue says
Made this tonight. We enjoyed it very much. We used light coconut milk, and it worked perfectly well. Cooking the shrimp on skewers was a problem in that, by the time the areas between each shrimp which were not on either side that actually contacts the grill were done, the parts that were directly on the heat were overcooked. I ended up taking them off the skewers and adding them to the cauliflower mixture for a few minutes to cook through. Making the curry sauce this way allows one to use very little coconut milk, which cuts calories. Would have never thought to do it like this. My husband also preferred it to the more typical wet curries. Genius! I also added some cut red bell pepper and onions with the cauliflower. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all that leftover coconut milk!
Nicky Corbishley says
Thanks for the feedback and glad you enjoyed it Sue. Sounds like a great addition to the cauliflower rice too, I’ll try that myself 🙂
how much calories do I need a day ? says
really good, I made it twice last week , thank you
Nicky Corbishley says
Excellent! I love to hear feedback when someone tries out a recipe. Thanks for coming back and letting me know 🙂