Brussels Sprouts have a bad rep

Time: 53 minutes

Difficulty: 2/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Now, Brussels Sprouts aren’t my favorite vegetable out there. I typically lean toward not liking them. While carrots are my favorite vegetable, I only like them uncooked. Cooked carrots are usually pretty terrible in my opinion. In the Brussels Sprouts family, I think I prefer basically everything else to sprouts (including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and collard greens). The only one I may dislike more is Kale, and that’s a maybe. Despite this, I thought fried sprouts sounded novel and wanted to give them a try. Maybe this recipe from An Unapologetic Cookbook will prove they aren’t always bad.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

This recipe is pretty simple and so are the ingredients. There aren’t really any special ingredients here and you should be able to find everything you need for it fairly easily.

Tools:

• A frying Vessel

Cooking Review:

Making Sauce: 27 minutes

After I mixed the ingredients for the sauce, I put it on the stove to come to a boil, which took about 5 minutes on medium high. Once at a boil, I let it continue to boil for another 5 minutes before adding the cornstarch slurry. I let it cook for another 2 minutes before removing from the heat, stirring in the garlic, and letting it steep for another 5 minutes. Finally, I strained the sauce and set it aside.

Chopping Brussels Sprouts: 7 minutes

While the oil came to temperature, I cut the Brussels Sprouts in half to prepare them for frying.

Frying Brussels Sprouts: 16 minutes

I fried the sprouts in two batches. The first batch, which was smaller took about 5 minutes to become nicely browned, while the second batch took about 10 minutes. Be very careful when adding the sprouts to the oil, as they will sputter and splatter pretty violently if there’s any water on them. Try your best to keep them as dry as possible before adding them to the oil. Once all the sprouts were done, I added some sauce to them and tossed to coat. The recipe makes plenty of sauce, so you’ll probably have some left over if you use 1 pound of sprouts.

Analysis:

These have great flavor. The sauce is nicely sweet and savory wit a slight spice to it. There is a slight fishy aftertaste, however, from the fish sauce. The sprouts were well cooked with a very crispy exterior and soft interior. I did skip the squeeze of lemon juice at the end and I don’t think it really needs it. In total, this is a Brussels Sprouts dish that I wouldn’t mind having. Besides the excessive oil sputtering, fishy aftertaste, and excess sauce this recipe makes, there’s nothing to complain about. I’m giving this a recipe a 9/10. If you’re like me, you’ll probably like these.