Keto Papas Rellenas Made with Cauliflower

Keto papas rellenas on a wooden board, one broken open to show the seasoned beef filling
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Introduction

These keto papas rellenas are a low-carb take on the Puerto Rican stuffed potato ball: mashed cauliflower where the potato would be, wrapped around seasoned ground beef, coated in almond flour and baked instead of fried.

Where This Recipe Came From

When I was a kid, my mom would often go to a local Puerto Rican market to buy a lot of our groceries. I don’t remember most of what she would buy there, but I do remember her bringing home papas rellenas for lunch as a treat from time to time! These have been a favorite dish of mine for a long time, but sadly, “stuffed potatoes” are not exactly low carb. But, determined to revive an old favorite, my mom came up with a creative way to recreate one of our favorite dishes — cauliflower where the potato used to be! It is the version I make now, and it holds up against the ones I remember from that market.

Four keto papas rellenas on a cutting board

What Are Papas Rellenas?

Papas rellenas (in Puerto Rico you will also hear them called rellenos de papa) are, as the name says, stuffed potatoes. More specifically, they are mashed potatoes stuffed with seasoned meat (and other fillings, depending on which variety of them you make), coated with flour, that are then fried. Our version is a bit different; instead of potatoes we used mashed cauliflower, instead of flour we used almond flour, and instead of frying these in oil we baked them (we also used an air fryer for a second batch and they turned out wonderfully). Using cauliflower might sound strange, but don’t knock it ’till you try it! I used to dislike cauliflower, but I have found that it can taste really good if you season it and prepare it correctly! Even by itself it can be incredible, you can try whole roasted cauliflower and surprise yourself with how good it really is!

How To Make These Keto Papas Rellenas: Swaps

The recipe card below has the steps. The thing to understand is that the cauliflower mash is standing in for potato, so it has to hold a shape the way mashed potato does — and straight after it is mashed with the cheese, melted butter and table cream, it is still too soft to hold one.

So it goes in the fridge for at least an hour. That is the part to plan around: the mash has to be firm enough to mold into a ball around a spoonful of beef, and warm mash will not do it. Start the beef about ten minutes before that hour is up, so the two are ready together.

How To Make These Keto Papas Rellenas: Breading

Shaping is the fiddly part. The beef goes into a thumb-sized indent in each ball, and the sides get pinched together to seal it before you smooth the ball round again — sealed properly, the filling stays inside.

The coating is three layers, and the order matters: almond flour, egg wash, then almond flour again. The egg wash in the middle is what the second coat of almond flour sticks to.

Why Table Cream?

Every time we include table cream in a recipe, we inevitably get the question, “Can I just use heavy cream instead?” You can, and the dish will still turn out well.

Table cream is a different product though, not just a different brand of the same thing. It is a canned, shelf-stable cream — lighter than heavy cream, and sold alongside evaporated and condensed milk rather than in the chiller. We prefer it here, and that is a preference rather than a rule.

You can usually find table cream in the baking aisle, typically located somewhere by condensed milk. It is pretty common, but if you aren’t looking for it, you will probably miss it. It is normally cheaper than heavy cream, and of course, it has no sugar and is low carb. If you want to spare yourself the hassle of looking for it at the grocery store, you can order it on Amazon HERE.

You’ll find the full per-serving breakdown — calories, fat, fiber, protein, and net carbs — in the Nutrition Facts panel with the recipe below.

Keto Papas Rellenas Made with Cauliflower

9 net carbs
Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
30 minutes
Total Time
1 hour 40 minutes Includes 1 hour chilling
Yield
10 servings
Course
Appetizer, Side Dish
Cuisine
Puerto Rican

Ingredients

Stuffed "Potato"

Ground Beef Filling

Breading

Nutrition Facts

10 servings per recipe
Sugar Alcohols 0g 0% 0g 0%
Allulose 0g 0% 0g 0%

About these numbers: We are home cooks, not certified nutritionists. Nutrition is shared as a courtesy. We pick a representative product for each ingredient, and our recipe system works out the totals from the amounts in this recipe, so please treat them as a helpful estimate rather than a guarantee. The brands you buy, any swaps you make, and how generously you portion the recipe will all move these numbers.

Directions

  1. Chop cauliflower into pieces and boil until soft (about 12-15 minutes).

  2. Drain and mash cauliflower in large mixing bowl. The desired consistency is similar to that of mashed potatoes.

  3. Add cheese, melted butter, table cream, salt, pepper, and garlic powder to mashed cauliflower. Refrigerate mixture for at least one hour or until firm enough to mold.

  5. Approximately 10 minutes before your cauliflower mixture is ready, cook ground beef in a large pot with beef broth, onion powder, almond flour, paprika, cumin, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

  6. In a bowl, whisk together two eggs to create egg wash; add 1 1/2 cup of almond flour to a bowl - this will serve as breading.

  7. Separate the firm cauliflower mixture into about 10 sections - each section will be one ball. One section at a time, create a ball and use your thumb to create an indention in the center; fill the indention with ground beef.

  8. Pinch the sides of the indention to seal the ball; smooth into ball shape.

  10. Coat with almond flour.

  11. Coat with egg wash.

  12. Coat once more with almond flour.

  13. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes in a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

    We have also cooked a batch in the air fryer, but the setting we used is particular to our machine and will not carry across models, so the oven method is the one we can give you.

If you make these, leave a rating and tell us in the comments how they turned out, or share a photo on Instagram with #buttertogetherkitchen.

Updated — September 23, 2026: The method overview now includes the hour in the fridge that the mash needs before it can be shaped, which it had been leaving out, and says what table cream actually is.

Correction — August 23, 2026: These have more than the 3 g net carbs each the article used to say. The Nutrition Facts on the recipe card have the per-serving numbers.