Brussels sprouts: some folks love 'em, others, not so much
This past holiday season I sampled Brussels sprouts prepared in a couple of ways; mostly roasted and once, deep-fat fried. They were all sensationally good.
It doesn't hurt that I love Brussels sprouts, but that hasn't always been true.
When I was a kid, on the rare occasions when Mom made Brussels sprouts, they came to the table gray and mushy and even smelly. Yuck.
It's possible because fresh Brussels sprouts were probably not nearly as available as they are today, Mom started with frozen Brussels sprouts. There's a good chance, starting from frozen, Mom overcooked them; that's easy to do.
Cabbage and Brussels sprouts, when overcooked, give off a sulfurous odor that many folks dislike and some even find offensive (try reheating leftover Brussels sprouts in the office microwave and see what happens).
Research led me to a 2014 article in the Daily Mail, a United Kingdom newspaper, about Andy Brunning, a chemistry teacher, who wrote about the science behind odoriferous Brussels sprouts. Brunning explained that some chemical compounds with long and difficult to pronounce names (try saying isothiocyanates three times fast) produce a bitter flavor in cooked Brussels sprouts.
Brunning also explained that for 30 percent of us, Brussels sprouts' bitter flavor component is tasteless (it's a genetic thing) while the remaining 70 percent find that bitterness to be off-putting (hello, marketing department).
I must be in the 30-percent group. Even if I weren't, I've found that cooking Brussels sprouts until just done and no more, so they still have a bright green color, they can deliver an inherent sweetness and don't seem to give off a sulfurous odor.
Folks must be finding Brussels sprouts appealing since a restaurant at which I was having dinner last week served roasted Brussels sprouts as the vegetable with rotisserie chicken. My server didn't even ask me if that was OK or did I want to select another vegetable? That restaurant took it for granted Brussels sprouts would be fine. They were right.
Twenty-five years ago I spotted a whole Brussels sprouts stalk at a late Fall farmers market. Up until that moment, I had no idea how Brussels sprouts grow; just never gave it a thought. I bought that stalk and hauled it home, not realizing its inherent high hassle-factor.
After carefully trimming the sprouts from that stalk I started trying to figure out how to cook them (there were a lot). The problem: the variety of sizes from about green pea size to larger than the standard we find in a bag of today's sprouts. At that time I lightly boiled my sprouts, so I quartered the largest ones, halved the medium-large ones and then, once the water boiled, started adding them in intervals from largest to smallest. If you enjoy Brussels sprouts, fresh-from-the-stalk's the way to go.
My next Brussels sprouts experiment is going to be a slaw.
My life partner, Nan, started making a cooked and chilled Brussels sprouts salad a few months ago. She suggested I make one for a group dinner to which we both contributed a dish. I added pecans and bacon to my very healthy salad, and there was just a quarter-cup left at the end of that dinner. Here's the recipe.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.