Are the brown spots on cauliflower OK to eat?

What you see: Brown spots on cauliflower.
What it is: Bruising, most likely from bumping into other cauliflower heads, or cold temperatures.
Eat or toss: Eat! This is just a minor injury, though the cauliflower is more vulnerable to rot, so don’t delay.

So, can you eat cauliflower with brown spots and dots?

First, consider that cauliflowers are just big tender heads.

As cruciferous vegetables go, cauliflower is harvested when it’s particularly immature, when the curds made up of little buds on its head are still hard and barely resemble the flowers they’d bloom into, if only we left them the field.

Their immaturity also makes them more fragile. So, even though cauliflower can seem frustratingly hard when you’re chopping it for your favorite recipe, it also bruises easily.

(Speaking of favorite cauliflower recipes, here’s mine, though I add way more garlic and rosemary and bake both right in.)

For the journeying cauliflower, it’s often a bumpy ride

When you picture crates of cauliflowers traveling in trucks, it’s easy to imagine how they could bruise each other on a bumpy ride. On impact, their cells can rupture or otherwise suffer damage that causes chemicals to leak and mingle with each other and oxygen. All this results in that brown color. Too-cold storage temps can also hurt the cells enough for them to release the enzymes that lead to browning.

“It’s not going to hurt you, it just doesn’t look good visually,” said Chris Gunter, vegetable production specialist at North Carolina State University. “With cauliflower, you’re dealing with an immature inflorescence. So the shelf life is really delicate.”

(That’s right — inflorescence. That pretty word refers to a cluster of flowers on a branch or cluster of branches.)

Inspect the cauliflower

So, if you see these brown spots, don’t worry—your cauliflower is probably still fine, just a tiny bit bruised.

But, as usual, the evidence of some damaged cells means you should prioritize eating; it’s now on a faster track to going bad. Inspect for signs any opportunistic microbes or fungus may have set up shop (i.e. visible mold, soft, rotting tissue, or black dots, which could be a fungus — to be safe, cut off any black areas). If all you’re seeing are these brown freckles, then go ahead and make that cauliflower mash, or gratin or “steak” or …. Mmm. cauliflower is so good, right?

When cauliflower head butts.

Updated May 2023