Brussel Sprout Failure

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to eat at Lolita's in Cleveland as part of a work function. While there, I tasted the best brussel sprouts known to mankind. Even the fervent brussel sprout hater at the table had to admit that they tasted rather good. Since that day, I have vowed to create these carmelized brussel sprouts at home, so finally, I had my husband buy some sprouts on the weekly grocery shopping trip.

I started by finding the recipe from lolita online. Turns out, the sprouts are deep fried at Lolitas with a lot of funny ingredients we just don't keep on hand, so I searched some more and found a carmelized sprout recipe that held promise. It called for shelling the sprouts of their outer layers and quartering them.

You can probably guess how things play out by the fact that I have not included the recipe. You don't want it.

 

Apparently, the recipe "carmelized" the sprouts by adding sugar and letting them stir-fry in it until the sugar becomes carmel, rather than letting the natural sugars in the veggies do their own carmelizing.

The result was an oversweet mess that still somehow had an overpowering cabbage taste that sprouts are known for, a taste absent from the deep dried Lolita version. In the end, I have been reminded of a valuable kitchen lesson. Sometimes a recipe is difficult for a very good reason. Cheaping out for the easy route results in these terrible bruseel sprouts.

I added them to spaghetti, but alas, the sprouts were stronger than the tomato sauce. Epic fail. I have one sentence of advice at the end of this venture: do not carmelize brussl sprouts by stir frying them with sugar. Just don't.