You either love Brussels Sprouts or hate them. If you're in the second category, it is my life mission to convert you to the Cult of the Sprout.
I love them. I love them steamed, boiled, roasted, shredded into confetti and sauteed...but until this week, I had never loved them pickled.
It's simple. You start with about half a pound of fresh sprouts. Peel off the ugly outside leaves. I always peel the outside leaves even if they aren't ugly, because that's where dirt and aphids hide.
Cut them in half if they are large (and most sprouts that I can find lately are large).
Then you cook them for just a couple minutes in a large pot of boiling, salted water. I always cook vegetables in heavily salted water because Thomas Keller does, and well, THOMAS KELLER.
Drain and rinse them in cold water:
They will be a beautiful bright green. Enjoy that color now, because it's about to change. Ah well, c'est la vie.
Then you submerge them in a pickling liquid that is made of 2/3 of a cup of hot water with 1 tbsp of honey mixed in (you could use sugar, too) and 1 tsp of salt. Mollie says to use seasoned rice vinegar, but I had a better idea! I used my spicy peppered vinegar from the Asian market.
The spicy vinegar (the one on the left) was perfect. It added a nice zippiness. Someone suggested you could include these sprouts in a Bloody Mary and to that I say yay, yes you could.
If you can't find spicy vinegar, you could probably just toss in a teaspoon or two of red pepper flakes, depending on how spicy you wanted them.
I put a plate on top of the sprouts to ensure they stayed submerged in the pickling liquid. A few hours later, they looked like this:
They are a great little snack. You don't want to eat too many at once, just one or two with a sandwich or cheese plate. Store them in their liquid in the fridge in a glass or ceramic container.
Recipe adapted from
Mollie Katzen's "Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without."
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