Huh... interesting. I always assumed that the only reason I hated brussel sprouts when I was growing up was because of the way my mother used to cook them. She would just boil them, and then add...
Huh... interesting. I always assumed that the only reason I hated brussel sprouts when I was growing up was because of the way my mother used to cook them. She would just boil them, and then add butter, salt and pepper to them before serving. And it wasn't until I tried my sister's recipe a few years ago, where she oven roasted them with bacon and added toasted almonds to them at the end, that I actually started liking them. I never even considered that another factor in my newfound appreciation for them might also be that the variety being sold now isn't actually the same as those my mother used to get when I was young. TIL!
I'm in the exact same boat! I wasn't a kid that was averse to veggies (I loved broccoli!) but brussels sprouts were completely unpalatable to me. Fast forward to adulthood, and after my now...
I'm in the exact same boat!
I wasn't a kid that was averse to veggies (I loved broccoli!) but brussels sprouts were completely unpalatable to me. Fast forward to adulthood, and after my now husband and I started dating he cooked some up for us one night. I expected to have to politely choke them down, but I was taken aback when they were actually delicious! Up until now I assumed that was because I just liked the way he cooked them, but it turns out the actual plant likely changed as well without me having any idea.
Another couple we know taught us how to separate the leaves and roast them to make little "chips" that are a nice, tasty, and decently healthy snack.
Ditto. I have never been a picky eater either, even when my parents encouraged us to try all sorts of "strange" international cuisine (by white, Canadian kid standards anyways), E.g. chicken feet...
Ditto. I have never been a picky eater either, even when my parents encouraged us to try all sorts of "strange" international cuisine (by white, Canadian kid standards anyways), E.g. chicken feet at Dim Sum, sushi/sashimi, grilled eel, liverwurst, stinky cheeses, etc. I rarely every balked at eating anything back then, still don't, and most of those foods are still amongst my favorite things to eat... But brussel sprouts were one of the few exceptions, and my arch-nemesis back then! I was absolutely repulsed by them until very recently. :P
[Brussels sprouts] deserved their bad reputation. "They were just very bitter; a very strong bitter taste," Bontadelli says.
This all started to change in the 1990s, and it began in the Netherlands, where Brussels sprouts have a simpler name: spruitjes. A Dutch scientist named Hans van Doorn, who worked at the seed and chemical company Novartis (the seed part is now called Syngenta), figured out exactly which chemical compounds in spruitjes made them bitter.
At that point, the small handful of companies that sell Brussels sprouts seeds started searching their archives, looking for old varieties that happen to have low levels of the bitter chemicals.
[...]
There are hundreds of these old varieties. The companies grew them in test plots, and they did, in fact, find some that weren't as bitter. They cross-pollinated these old varieties with modern, high-yielding ones, trying to combine the best traits of old and new spruitjes. It took many years. But it worked. "From then on, the taste was much better. It really improved," Sintenie says.
Then word spread in the professional culinary scene. It took off mainly in the United States, not in Europe.
[...]
Demand is booming; farmers are getting four or five times more money than they did a decade ago for their crop.
Huh... interesting. I always assumed that the only reason I hated brussel sprouts when I was growing up was because of the way my mother used to cook them. She would just boil them, and then add butter, salt and pepper to them before serving. And it wasn't until I tried my sister's recipe a few years ago, where she oven roasted them with bacon and added toasted almonds to them at the end, that I actually started liking them. I never even considered that another factor in my newfound appreciation for them might also be that the variety being sold now isn't actually the same as those my mother used to get when I was young. TIL!
I'm in the exact same boat!
I wasn't a kid that was averse to veggies (I loved broccoli!) but brussels sprouts were completely unpalatable to me. Fast forward to adulthood, and after my now husband and I started dating he cooked some up for us one night. I expected to have to politely choke them down, but I was taken aback when they were actually delicious! Up until now I assumed that was because I just liked the way he cooked them, but it turns out the actual plant likely changed as well without me having any idea.
Another couple we know taught us how to separate the leaves and roast them to make little "chips" that are a nice, tasty, and decently healthy snack.
Ditto. I have never been a picky eater either, even when my parents encouraged us to try all sorts of "strange" international cuisine (by white, Canadian kid standards anyways), E.g. chicken feet at Dim Sum, sushi/sashimi, grilled eel, liverwurst, stinky cheeses, etc. I rarely every balked at eating anything back then, still don't, and most of those foods are still amongst my favorite things to eat... But brussel sprouts were one of the few exceptions, and my arch-nemesis back then! I was absolutely repulsed by them until very recently. :P
From the article:
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