Don’t like your brussels sprouts? You will after you have tasted this quick and easy recipe that adds a bit of sweetness and a nice kick to the little cabbage buds.
Ingredients
16 oz Brussels Sprouts
1 to 1 ½ Tablespoons Oil
1 Tablespoon Sweet Chili Sauce
1 to 2 Tablespoons Sriracha or Chili Garlic Sauce
Salt and Pepper to Taste
Directions
Wash the brussels sprouts, cut off the stems and discard, and cut the larger buds in half. If some of the leaves fall off in the process, just keep those to throw in the pan with the sprouts.
Add the oil to a non-stick skillet and put over medium heat. Once the oil has heated up (thirty seconds to a minute), add the sprouts. Stir those and allow to sauté for about a minute. Then add about a third of a cup of water to the pan along with the sweet chili sauce and Sriracha and stir together. Cover and allow the sprouts to cook for eight to ten minutes.
Uncover the skillet and stir the sprouts. There will likely still be some water in the pan, so allow it to cook out. The sprouts will be more of a dull green color now, indicating that they have steamed. Stick a fork in one to determine if they are at the desired tenderness (note that you still have a few more minutes of cooking to go). If not, you can add a little more water and cook for a few more minutes.
Once the water has cooked out and the sprouts are close to the desired tenderness, you will want to continue to cook them over medium heat to get a little bit of browning and maybe some char to them. This is the “roasting” process (as an option, you can stick them under the broiler for a couple of minutes as long as it is an oven-safe skillet). I like just a little bit of char and I pull them off the fire before they start to get crispy (though some of those leaves may already be there).
At this point, I add a pinch of salt and some cracked black pepper and allow them to cool for a few minutes. Then put them on the table and the kids will dig in! (Okay, maybe not. But you should still enjoy them.)
If you don’t have sweet chili sauce, substitute a teaspoon or two of honey. You can also add in a teaspoon of soy sauce at the point you add the water and chili sauces to kick up the Asian flavor of the dish. If you do that, you likely will not need to add salt at the end. If you use Chili Garlic sauce instead of Sriracha, you may want to adjust the amount since it is a little be hotter. As for me, I adjust the amount up because I like my sprouts spicy!
Brussels sprouts are a member of the cabbage family (thus the reason they smell like cabbage when cooking) and people have been eating these buds since at least the days of Ancient Rome. They became a popular crop in Belgium around the thirteenth century which is where they picked up their name. They may be the bane to kids across the world, but they are quite healthy and contain high concentrations of Vitamins C and K. And this recipe gives them a nice kick that maybe even kids will like.