With their distinct flavor, Brussels sprouts are not everyone’s favorite vegetable. In fact, they’re not my favorite vegetable. My husband, on the other hand, loves them, and they are very nutritious, so I suck it up and eat them every once in a while. Most recently, we prepared a Cream-Braised Brussels Sprouts recipe posted a couple years ago on the Orangette blog. This is for the Brussels sprouts haters out there: Believe it or not, when braised in cream, the flavor of Brussels sprouts changes into something infinitely more tolerable.
Brussels sprouts are a member of the cabbage family and sprout from the sides of large stalks. They are generally an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, and the younger heads / sprouts are more tender than the larger ones. Brussels sprouts are believed to have been first grown in Belgium, supplying the “Brussels” end of the moniker. When shopping, choose heads that have nice compact leaves and that aren’t too large. They can be prepared a variety of ways. It is quite common for whole sprouts to be steamed or boiled and served with a sauce. They can be halved or quartered to expose their light interior leaves (and reduce their cooking time) and lightly sauted. Another common practice is to core them and slice them into shreds before cooking, even further reducing their cooking time. And of course, you could braise them in cream as the recipe above indicates.