Eat Your Veggies! – Super Simple Sprouts

In our next installment of delicious ways to get your kids excited to eat their veggies, we bring you deliciously smoky Brussels sprouts with bacon, garlic and shallots. As a kid, my own dad told me Brussels sprouts were gross! But of course he thought they were, people used to just boil these delightful tiny cabbages and they turn out mushy and lacking flavor. Now I buy Brussels sprouts every time I go grocery shopping and my boyfriend asks for them specifically on a weekly basis. I adapted my personal recipe from Sunny Anderson’s Food Network recipe, using shallots instead of onions and adding bits of garlic (I throw garlic in almost everything to give it some flavor and I love the smell that lingers in my home).

Ingredients:
4 strips of thick cut bacon (or pancetta if you’d like to get fancy)
2 tbsp butter
1 pound Brussels sprouts (You can buy your sprouts already cleaned and halved to skip a huge portion of the prep, which I definitely recommend doing if you’re not concerned with the extra cost)
1/2 large onion (or 1 whole shallot)
3 cloves garlic (as with all of these, garlic is optional if your kids aren’t fans of the flavor)
Salt and fresh ground black pepper

If you bought whole Brussels sprouts you’ll need to prep them by running them under warm water and removing the outer leaves. Don’t throw these away, I’ve got a special bonus recipe for you at the bottom you’re going to love for Brussels chips. Once you remove the outer leaves cut the stem off of each sprout then chop it in half and set them aside on paper towels to dry off.

Chop your bacon and garlic into manageable pieces and toss in your pan on medium- high heat. You don’t want the garlic to burn, as it will add a metallic flavor to your food, so keep an eye on the pan. Once both have cooked down and the garlic is a nice golden brown, remove and set aside in a bowl. In the same pan, melt your butter over high heat with the bacon fat and add chopped shallots or onions with the Brussels sprouts. Cook together, stirring regularly, until the sprouts are golden brown, about 8-10 minutes. Toss everything back together with salt and fresh ground pepper and serve immediately.  This whole meal is just so delicious, and outside of some quick chopping, the prep is very minimal – especially if you buy pre-chopped sprouts.

Now if you took the extra time to prep your sprouts yourself, here’s is that yummy Brussels chips recipe as an extra snack for later. I found this on Nom Nom Paleo and have since used it for all my leftover Brussels sprout leaves as a delicious and healthy alternative to popcorn.

Ingredients:
Up to 2 cups of Brussels sprout leaves
Melt 2 tbsp of butter
Salt to taste

Set your oven to 350 degrees. Toss the melted butter, salt and leaves together to coat evenly. Lay them out flat on a baking pan and bake for about 8-10. Devour as soon as possible in a big bowl for sharing. These are a great healthy alternative snack your family will love.

Enjoy these delicious recipes with your family as soon as possible and let us know how they liked them!