Brussels sprouts - food, or foul?

[baratron]

Something cool I discovered today: Waitrose have walking stick holders on their shopping trolleys! How awesome is that? I'm used to having to balance my stick over the handle and hoping it doesn't fall off as I go round the shop (because I really don't want the end that touches the ground lying in the trolley alongside my food). I expect they also work for umbrellas - some shapes of umbrella, anyway.

Richard and I had an "argument" last night about the number of Brussels sprouts that a person would consume at Christmas, given all the other vegetables we are preparing. I thought that 4-6 would be the right sort of number, my mum thought it would be more like 6-8. Richard won by pointing out that the number that a "normal" person would consume is zero.

[Poll #1503127]

If I was feeling more brain-full I could extend the questions to ask about other cabbagey things (I personally love white cabbage in raw or cooked form, and red cabbage raw, but don't care for cooked red cabbage or any kind of green cabbage), but that would take Effort which I should probably be spending on tidying up the house before our visitors tomorrow. We have decided not to make it TIDY (because that is impossible with the time available), but there needs to be enough chair and table space for everyone, and currently all conceivable surfaces are covered with books, tv and video game controllers, plushie toys, cameras, bits of circuit board, screwdrivers...

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Since I am doing the cooking tomorrow, and I have once had a brussels sprout I did not hate, I am giving the sprouts one last chance: I have bought a stick of sprouts and I am going to steam them until tender and no more, and then I am going to see if they still taste like the awfulness of an entire bitter cabbage concentrated into an object the size of a golf ball, or not.

[ailbhe]

Nutmeg or mace is great with sprouts or spinach.

[geminigirl]

I'm told the magic is to steam for 7 minutes or less. I actually prefer them roasted though.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Quite. If you boil them to death, they will get their revenge.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

We tend to poach them in riesling with shallots and bacon. They don't need much cooking.

[brooksmoses]

I'll second the advice to roast them -- they're much more yummy that way.

My wife's recipe has a bit of a story behind it -- she told it to someone at the farmers market who saw her buying sprouts and mentioned that she could never get her kids to eat them, and this person saw her at the market the next week and raved about how she'd had to go out to the grocery to get more sprouts because her kids liked them so much. Basically, you just halve the sprouts and roast them in a hot oven in a glass pan with a touch of olive oil to keep them from sticking, and meanwhile make a sauce of butter and balsamic vinegar and frozen orange juice concentrate, and pour that over the sprouts when they get roasted to a reasonable doneness.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

On the basis that there are lots of things I didn't like when I was younger that I like now, I tried sprouts again recently. They were roasted in a portion of roast vegetables that also included potatoes, carrots, broccoli, peppers and garlic. Everything else was lovely. The sprouts were just unbelievably vile. I *could* eat them, but got no pleasure from doing so.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

So the verdict, fromm all 4 family members present is, "No."
I steamed small fresh sprouts until just cooked, and everyone agreed they were quite nicely cooked, but they still tasted bitter (though not as sulphorously horrible as some I've had).
Brussels Sprouts: Nul Points.