Grow Your Own #45 - Brussels Sprout Hash

I was very excited to participate in the Grow Your Own roundup hosted this month by Girlichef, especially since I’ve had such wild success with my garden this year. Every year I plant something I’ve never grown before, and this year my choice was Brussels sprouts. I had never been a fan of Brussels sprouts until earlier this year when Ginny and I made a Brussels Sprout Hash with pancetta. So when I was wandering through the local greenhouse one day this spring, and spotted the adorable little sprout seedlings, I just couldn’t resist. I later discovered that they are not meant for spring planting and are intended to be a more “late summer” fruit, if you will. Well, by then it was too late, as they were already in the ground, so I decided to just let nature take its course and see what happened.

Well....THIS is what happened:

Aren’t they pretty? Yes, I thought so, too. I drafted the hubs to hack the plants off at the base just before I left for my most recent trip to see Ginny, and proceeded to separate the buds from the stems. I ended up with about a gallon of sprouts. When I arrived in Iowa, we re-enacted the previous scene from my kitchen by cleaning and chopping the sprouts, then sautéing them up in bacon grease and a little cider vinegar.

The first time we made these, we pulled the leaves apart and chopped the tougher cores, but we went the easy route this time and just chopped them up. We also managed to restrain ourselves this time and served them with a little fresh grated parmesan on top alongside some beautiful little grilled baby eggplants we picked up at the farmers market and some lovely sirloin steaks, you know, instead of hovering over the stove, forks in hand, and gorging ourselves on the lovely green bounty as we did last time.

This is my submission to this month’s Grow Your Own roundup.