I already knew about this phylogenetic tree (although I have always heard the common ancestor be called the "wild mustard", not wild cabbage), but the article was quite interesting.
I only wish that as a PSA, they had included the reminder to people over 30 years old who hate Brussels sprouts, that the delicious ones you can eat today are not the ones they hated in their youth, and if you haven't had sprouts in years you might want to give them a second try (salted, oiled and baked, not boiled or steamed of course!)
I think the sprouts trauma is the result of picking the wrong cooking method.
I was so surprised when I tried baked sprouts for the first time (use a really host cast iron skilet for even better results) that I started to believe that every vegetable can be delicious as long as you bake it!
There’s many delicious and easy ways to eat vegetable! Two of my favorite:
- Belgian Stoemp: basically smashed-potatoes with smashed-other legumes. Cook everything together (with herbs if you can), smash, add lipid and salt and you’re done!
- German Ein Topf: put vegetables, beans and sausages in a pot (I use tofu ones or tempeh). Cover, cook slowly. It’s almost a salty Tajin from the north.
- Recover bland vegetables (sprouts or anything) to a fantastic soup in 5 minutes: add a bit of water, coconut cream (or caw cream / silken tofu…), spices. A bit of tahin and corail lentils if you have. Mix and adjust water.
Bon appétit :)
a popular concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamppot
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The modern cultivars literally taste different, it's not just cooking method. The bitter compounds were identified and bred out.
I wish I could find "authentic" sprouts in supermarkets. I'm sure there's a niche for it.
How long ago did this happen?
1990s research at Novartis, not sure how quickly the new cultivars were adopted,.maybe someone else can chime in
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/fr...
Did they get the sulfurous compounds out as well?
"I started to believe that every vegetable can be delicious as long as you bake it!"
Baking is good, but I also came to another conclusion - vegetables that are disgusting if they are cooked to a slimy paste, can be delicious eaten raw in a salad!
Examples please!
Broccoli!
Raw broccoli in a salad will get you tossed out of the country I was born in :-)
Now the true surprise with broccoli for me was learning that you can dice the stems and butter-roast them, then use them in pretty much anything from rice dishes to pies. Amazing
Great point about brussel sprouts and it's truly fascinating on a number of levels. I think we're all tempted to believe the story that our palate just changes as we get older. But that's not what happened with brussel sprouts! They became cultivated differently to change their taste and so the modern ones we have are not the bitter ones we had as a kid.
I think there's a similar story for, say, canned peas which used to be nasty and made me think I didn't like peas. Granted I still don't consider myself someone who likes peas from a can, but fresh peas in a salad, or flash frozen peas in a bag that stores in the freezer, I'm open to those.
That's not to say that our tastes don't change, but brussel sprouts are kind of a fascinating mirage where it seems like the change might have been growing up into adulthood when really it was a chang in cultivation. These are just off the top of my head, but over the past couple of decades, there's been a quiet revolution in mass produced veggies on a number of levels that in each of their individual instances trace back to fascinating stories of science.
My family has typically stir fried them, chopped up with olive oil salt and pepper, so I always got confused by Brussels sprouts horror stories
People always say this and no, they still taste nasty. It would be interesting to compare today's sprouts to one of the original examples, they must've been truly foul if there's been such an improvement.
Maybe it's like cilantro, and you're one of the unlucky few people who got the genes for "[this] tastes like dirty soap"