Decoding Brussels sprouts

It’s funny how certain I was about wanting write about Brussels sprouts for today’s post. Already at lunch on Saturday, I was giving my visiting Swedish cousin an unnecessarily enthusiastic hard sell when I saw them on the menu. Dinner with my parents met a similar sort of fate when my father actually ordered them unprompted. I was just really interested in how they taste.

Brussels sprouts seem to be everywhere lately, and I’ve had a lot of great preparations. Which is intriguing, given how vividly I remember hating them as a kid. Terrible stuff. Leafy, dense, bland. Flavorless. We’d eat them steamed—along with a whole lot of other long-cooking vegetables.

Thank you science. One more mystery I can now put to bed: Apparently, overcooking Brussels sprouts (doesn’t take much—steaming over ten minutes can do the trick) releases glucosinolate, a substance that mimics the sensory attributes of sulphur. This, researchers say, may account for all the Brussels sprout-directed hate we’ve seen over the years.

Nobody’s told me this directly (or, frankly, even at all), but I’d venture to say that one of the reasons Brussels sprouts may be so pervasive on restaurant menus just this second is that the things we can complain about when they’re cooked wrong (all the leaves, the way they hold flavor in, and their crazy absorptiveness) have made them—when cooked right—the perfect conduit for the kind of really simple and thoughtful recipes we’re getting back to right now.

In keeping with my bottom-of-the-curve “learning-stage” interest as far as this vegetable goes, I’ve put together some what-to-do recipe links that looked intriguing: Most Brussels sprouts I’ve seen have been quickly pan-fried—with a few key ingredients to sweeten the deal. Not too long ago, we had a lard-centric recipe on the site that I’m pretty fond of. But while that and other pig-related products like bacon are definitely a popular flavor route, so is lemon. Basically, anything with strong flavor (like garlic) seems to make for a good recipe.

Finally, in terms of nutrition, there’s a lot to love. Brussels sprouts are exceptionally high in vitamin C (four sprouts—at ten calories each—get you to 120% of your Percent Daily Value. That’s three times what you have from an orange). They’re also a huge source of vitamin K, along with folate, vitamin A, iron, vitamin B6, and indole, a phytochemical thought to have cancer-fighting properties. All great stuff. Ridiculous as it may feel, I think I’ll embrace my enthusiasm on this one.