How many calories are in cauliflower?
Raw cauliflower is about 25 kcal per 100 g, so a cup of florets is roughly 27 kcal and a whole trimmed medium head about 150. That is low enough to be worth using as a substitute rather than a side, which is most of what cauliflower is now sold for.
Per portion
| Portion | Calories | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raw, 100 g | ~25 kcal | 1.9 g | 5 g | 0.3 g |
| Boiled and drained, 100 g | ~23 kcal | 1.8 g | 4 g | 0.3 g |
| 1 cup florets (~110 g) | ~27 kcal | 2 g | 5.5 g | 0.3 g |
| Medium head, trimmed (~600 g) | ~150 kcal | 11 g | 30 g | 2 g |
| Plain cauliflower rice, 100 g | ~25 kcal | 1.9 g | 5 g | 0.3 g |
| Roasted in 1 tbsp oil, 200 g | ~170 kcal | 4 g | 10 g | 14 g |
| Aloo gobi, 1 katori (~150 g) | 150-200 kcal | 4 g | 20 g | 8 g |
What changes the number
The cauliflower barely varies: white, romanesco and purple heads sit within a few kilocalories of each other. Everything else is what goes in the pan.
- 1 tbsp oil for roasting a tray: about 120 kcal, and most recipes say two
- A cheese sauce: cauliflower cheese runs 105 to 150 kcal per 100 g, so a portion is 250 to 400
- Gobi paratha: 200 to 280 kcal each, nearly all of it flour and ghee
- Deep-fried gobi 65 or gobi manchurian: 300 to 450 kcal a plate
- A potato in the aloo gobi: about 90 kcal each
Roasting is the trap worth naming, because it is the version people reach for when eating carefully. Two hundred grams is 50 kcal plain and 170 in a tablespoon of oil — still a reasonable dish, no longer a low-calorie one.
Where it fits in a deficit
Cauliflower gives you a large amount of food for very little energy, with 2 g of fibre and 1.9 g of protein per 100 g. A 300 g serving is about 75 kcal and takes real chewing, which is the point of high-volume eating: appetite tracks the bulk of a meal, not only its calories.
The honest note is that it does not hold anyone for long on its own, and 11 g of protein in a whole head is not a protein source. Its value in a calorie deficit is displacement: it takes the plate space that something at 150 kcal per 100 g would have had.
The rice and pizza-base arithmetic
Both substitutions work, and the numbers are worth seeing rather than trusting.
Rice. A cup of cooked white rice is about 205 kcal. A cup of plain cauliflower rice is about 27. The swap saves roughly 180 kcal a serving — about 1,200 kcal a week if rice is a daily meal.
Pizza. A 12-inch wheat base is 550 to 700 kcal before toppings. A cauliflower base is typically 250 to 400, because it is not only cauliflower: commercial versions bind it with cheese, egg and rice flour or cornflour. The saving is 200 to 300 kcal, not the 500 the name suggests, and bases vary enough that the label is worth reading.
Two things undo most of this. Cooking cauliflower rice in a tablespoon of oil adds 120 kcal, leaving you saving 60 instead of 180 — dry-fry or steam it. And the toppings do not change: 400 kcal of cheese sits on either base, so the pizza is lower, not low.
Cauliflower is strongest as half a substitution rather than all of it: half rice and half cauliflower rice, with peas through it, is more repeatable than the full swap — and cabbage does the same work for less money.
Figures are typical values and vary by variety, size and preparation. General information, not medical advice.