I had high hopes for this gluten-free buffalo cauliflower but I found it disappointing!
This Eat Smart Buffalo cauliflower is available at Costco now and of course I have to try it and review it! Buffalo cauliflower is great for individuals who want a plant-based replacement for wings or want to add extra veggies into their diet!
If you’re looking for other Costco cauliflower food reviews, check out my review for the Costco Molinaro’s Cauliflower Pizza Kit, Costco Snackyard Crispy Cauliflower, Costco From the Ground Up Cauliflower Crackers and the Costco Crepini Egg Wraps with Cauliflower.
Have you seen the review I did for Costco Chef Jin’s Kitchen Tempura Cauliflower? It’s a very similar product.
Location in Store
The Eat Smart buffalo cauliflower comes with cauliflower, buffalo sauce, blue cheese dipping sauce and a packet of batter. You can find it in the cold produce room and the item number is 1566158.
Taste
The size of the cauliflower pieces is very inconsistent, some pieces are very large and then there’s lots of very tiny pieces. The very tiny pieces got lost in the batter while the large pieces were a little bit harder to cover completely in batter. Cauliflower is usually pretty crumbly though so that’s probably why there’s such a variation in sizes.
The oven method didn’t get the cauliflower very crispy at all. Even the small pieces were soft and soggy after coating them in buffalo sauce. The batter added a very slight amount of additional crunch.
The amount of buffalo sauce and blue cheese sauce that comes with this is very generous! Way more than you need to coat and dip the cauliflower.
The buffalo sauce is probably the best part, though it’s not great. It tastes like a typical hot wing sauce and is pretty spicy. Probably too hot for people who don’t like spicyย food. The flavor is mostly dominated by the buffalo sauce (at least without the blue cheese dip), but you do taste some cauliflower through it occasionally.ย
The blue cheese dip isn’t too strong and does have a nice cooling effect on the hot buffalo sauce; as someone who really doesn’t like blue cheese, it was edible, but I didn’t want another bite of it.
Overall, this is nothing like restaurant versions of this that I’ve had, though that could be mostly because it was baked in the oven. Maybe it would be a lot better if it were cooked in an air fryer.
Cost
I paid only $5.99 Canadian for 667 gram bag of cauliflower, batter mix, sauce and dip! This price is reasonable in my opinion.
Convenience
You can either bake this in the oven or use your air-fryer to cook the cauliflower. If you use the oven method you need to preheat the oven to 475 degrees fahrenheit. If you’re using your air fryer you preheat it to 400 degrees fahrenheit.
It does take a little effort to make the batter and coat each piece of cauliflower. I chose to dip each piece by hand one by one but you could also just dump the whole bag of cauliflower in your batter and stir it around.
The best before date is about a week from the date we purchased the cauliflower, it’s fresh cauliflower so needs to be kept refrigerated and not frozen.
Nutrition
Calories
One cup prepared is 150 calories, eight grams of fat, 19 grams of carbohydrates, two grams of fibre, three grams of sugar, three grams of protein and 460 mg of sodium. These nutrition facts can fluctuate depending on how much dip and sauce you use.
Ingredients
A really long list of ingredients that aren’t the healthiest! I do not see any wheat listed though so it’s safe to say this is gluten-free however it’s not dairy free and also contains egg so it isn’t vegan.
Scoring
Taste:ย 4/10
Cost:ย 8/10
Convenience:ย 5/10
Nutrition:ย 5/10
Overall
Walk on by!
This turned out too soggy and not at all crispy, I didn’t love the blue cheese dressing and the buffalo sauce was a bit hot for my liking.
Have you tried this? What did you think?
Please note that this review was not paid for or sponsored by any third party. This product was purchased by Costcuisine for the purpose of producing this review. The opinions in this review are strictly those of Costcuisine. Costcuisine is not affiliated with Costco or any of its suppliers. In the event that Costcuisine receives compensation for a post from the manufacturer of a product or some other third party, the arrangement will be clearly disclosed (including where the manufacturer of a product provides Costcuisine with a free sample of the product).
I cooked the cauliflower bits in the air-fryer. Although the cauliflower bits were broken up in various sizes and had lots of crumbs, I found they were more crispy and tasted better than my homemade ones. We didn’t use all the spicy hot sauce as it was too overwhelming but found the dip ideal. I give it a 6 out of 10 for flavor.
I also agree with costcuisine and Frankie. The bag we purchased contained some cauliflower leaves and some very small pieces. I cut the larger pieces of cauliflower apart to make them closer to bite size. The florets were already browning 2 days before the best before date, and some had already been trimmed, I assume to remove some bad spots.
Not impressed either agree with your comments
I deep fried mine for 6 minutes Minutes at 350 and they were great.
Oh those sound like a GIANT P.I.T.A. (pain in the behind!!). I think the frozen ones sound much more practical.
I love the hot sauce. Any idea what brand it is?
Ohhh good question! I’m not sure, maybe they make their own? I love it too.
Hi There, I appreciate your review. I just finished a bag of these with my wife. I followed the directions on the package as far as mixing the “batter” and coating the cauliflower. I found there was not enough “batter” to completely coat each floret. I agree the Hot sauce and the blue cheese dressing were both delicious and abundant. I found that eating a floret after it was cooked resulted in a “stale” flour kind of taste. So I was not looking forward to the sauced florets, but was very pleasantly surprised. I think the difference between us enjoying our bag and you not enjoying yours, was the air fryer. We prepared ours in the Ninja Air Fryer and while at 13 minutes they were crispy but still soft too, I hit them with some Kirkland Canola oil non stick Spray and stuck ’em in for another four minutes. They came out nice and crispy this time, I let them stand the recommended 2 minutes and then sauced them up and the Mrs. and I enjoyed them. If you have an air fryer you might want to give these another go, while still not restaurant quality, they are very enjoyable!
Hey Rob! I think I definitely need to pick up an air fryer so I can try them that way. Thanks for your comment! I love hearing what other people think of products.
Thanks for the review, I”m a new follower and from what I’ve read so far, I think your reviews sound like something I might write! I don’t have the opportunity to sample a lot of Costco products, so I’m grateful to read what you have to say ๐ Thanks for being thorough with the nutrition, as well.
Thanks for the nice comment Michelle! I really appreciate it ๐