Yes, I have found a way to cook up brussel sprouts into tasty bites of wonderful. To start, this is one of those vegetables I always thought I should like, but found them bitter or just plain lacking in taste. Why should I like them you wonder? I love cabbage; be it cooked, raw or in things. It doesn’t really matter to me how it’s prepared or the variety.

This original recipe we saw on the Food Network show, Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. For your enjoyment, the link here. Richard and I have changed this recipe a bit since we first saw it. Our first change was not cooking them in the oven but on the stove. Our 2nd change was to eliminate the use of the foil bowl(these images still show the foil ball though).

This image shows the already cooked bacon bits. I had also tossed them in the sage, olive oil and added the bay leaf, butter and lemon juice(since I was all out of fresh lemon).  In order to make sure that I didn’t burn the bottom of the pan, I also added a bit of water around it.  I was hoping that the foil ball would act like a streamer.

**It did work really well, too well in fact. Since this we have left out the foil ball altogether and just cooked them covered.**

Finally, our finished product. Yummy! A couple other changes we have made to this recipe is cooking the bacon longer. We prefer the flavor with them done a little over what the recipe calls for. Also, instead of tossing them with olive oil, we leave some of the bacon fat in the pan and cook them with that. This not only adds a bit more bacon flavor(can’t go wrong with bacon right?) but also the fat acts as oil so you don’t burn the brussel sprouts right a way. Don’t forget to test your brussel sprouts for tenderness before deciding they are finished. The 2nd time I made this I under cooked them by a lot and it wasn’t nearly as delicious.