Hey! Let's Make Brussels Sprout Hash With Bacon (Or Without Bacon, Whatevs)!!

We sure do love Brussels sprouts here in the Piepan household. Which is awesome, because I guess they're super healthy. Google told me that they're filled with thiamin, riboflavin, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and a very good source of dietary fiber, vitamin A, C, K, B6, folate, potassium and manganese. I don't know what half of that shit is, but it's probably great. Anyway, they taste awesome, and look like little cabbages, which is a major plus. So, sometimes when we get an amazingly healthy ingredient, such as B sprouts, we do the natural thing and cook it in a ton of bacon. Honestly, the tastes pair so well, it's natural. If you are vegan, or veg, or don't eat red meat/don't like bacon, don't skip this recipe! It's just as good without the bacon, I promise.


 In fact, a good side note about all of our recipes here are that almost anything can be substituted/left out. As a person who has maaaayyybe never followed a recipe through completely without subbing this or that or changing the amount of spices and such, I tend to view recipes as a guideline, or a helpful guide to flavors that I can mess with as I wish (except in the evil world of baking, where being precise is EVERYTHING). I encourage you to swap things out as much as you like, with our (and anyone's) recipes. Mix it up, it'll still be delicious, I promise

Anyway, onto the hash. Here's what you need to make what we did:

1 lb or so Brussels sprouts, trimmed and sliced thin
2-3 cloves garlic, minced (more or less to taste)
1/2 medium onion halved long-wise and sliced thin
3-4 slices of bacon, cubed
If making vegan:
a pinch of salt
a few grinds of pepper
a tablespoon or so of cooking oil

Start by preparing your sprouts. Cut off the bottom end where it connected to the stalk, and remove the outer leaves (they usually fall off during removing the bottoms).

You also want to remove any outer leaves that look brown or have discoloration, like this:

Now you have a pile of perfect B sprouts:

and the remainder. Toss the excess (or put it in your stock bag!)

Next, slice your sprouts length-wise into thin bits, about 1/8 to 1/4" thick, if you can. A mandolin slicer works great here, but we don't have one, so it was all hand-slice. If you hate them thin, this recipe is just as good with them halved

Here's your finished chop job:

Next, prepare your onions and garlic:

And your bacon, if using:

We use bacon from Local Pig when we can, but for store-bought bacon we use Burger's Smokehouse, which is an awesome local joint. We recently discovered that it's where my main food crush, David Chang, sources some of his meats from, which means WE HAVE GOOD FOOD INSTINCTS, Y'ALL.

Ok, now we're all ready. If you're going vegan with this dish, now is the time to add the salt and pepper to your B sprouts. When I make it vegan, I like to add thinly sliced mushrooms to it.

Get your pan going, medium heat, and add your bacon (obviously, if you're making it vegan, skip this step and just add a bit of oil to your pan instead)

Saute for a couple of minutes, then add your garlic and onion:

Stir and cook all this biz for about 3-4 minutes, or until the onions are semi-translucent and the whole shebang is fragrant.

Add your Brussels sprouts, and sort of fold the onions/bacon mixture on top. Try to get the sprouts down to the bottom of the pan, and the onion/bacon stuff to the top.

Now, turn your heat up to medium-high/high depending on your stove; we're gonna crisp those puppies up. The trick here is to let it sit for 2 minutes, then stir it for 30 seconds, repeat, repeat. You want to let the sprouts and bacon get a little brown, then stir 'em, let 'em get a little more brown, and so on. You can tell by the pictures that we crowded our pan a bit, so if you are sensible and are using a bigger pan, those rest/stir times may vary.  Do this for 6-8 minutes and it'll look about like this:

Now that it's browning quickly, we're gonna start stirring continuously, making sure to scrape the bits off the bottom. Keep doing this until it's at your desired crispiness. I did mine for another 8 minutes or so, so that everything got browned the way we like it.

LOOK AT ALL THIS CRISPY DELICIOUSNESS

Enjoy that shit.