To Make Martha Stewart's Crispy Brussels Sprouts, Butter The Pan First
Whether you need a dependable dinner side dish or a last-minute recipe to whip up ahead of a friend's potluck, you can't go wrong with some yummy Brussels sprouts. The particularly robust cruciferous vegetables can be prepared in various ways from stir-frying or sauteing to pan roasting. If you want to ensure a perfectly tender and crispy result guaranteed to please a crowd, take a page from none other than Martha Stewart and braise them in plenty of butter.
The television star and certified "hostess with the mostess" certainly knows her way around the kitchen. When it comes to cooking up the ultimate Brussels sprouts side dish, she's had her go-to technique down pat for decades. No, really. On TikTok, Stewart posted a throwback video of herself demonstrating her braised crispy Brussels sprouts method on what appears to be an early segment of her original TV show. It's safe to say that her cooking tips are as timeless as ever.
While many Brussels sprouts recipes, including Tasting Table's balsamic glazed version, suggest coating the bite-sized sprouts in extra virgin olive oil before roasting them in a baking pan, Stewart employs quite a bit of butter to achieve the perfect plate of Brussels sprouts. Her secret? Brush the baking pan with a generous amount of melted butter before adding in the vegetables.
Butter adds a richer flavor to Brussels sprouts
In the video, Stewart recommends parboiling the Brussels sprouts for a few minutes first, a step that can seriously help cut their bitterness before cooking. After the veggies have been sufficiently parboiled, she instructs viewers to pour them into the pre-buttered pan. She then suggests topping them off with salt and, yes, even more melted butter before covering them with parchment paper and allowing them to braise in the oven.
Stewart's choice of cooking fat here makes a ton of sense. Not only will the butter help to brown the veggies quickly and evenly but it will also infuse them with a rich, decadent flavor that's a touch more indulgent than your typical olive oil-roasted veggies. Due to the presence of milk solids in butter, the cooking fat starts to brown at a lower temperature than oil does, meaning it should take less time to achieve a yummy, crispy result when cooking your Brussels sprouts.
Better yet, when all those sugars and proteins in the milk solids begin to caramelize, your vegetables will be finished off with a subtly sweet and nutty coating resulting from the browned butter. As the cooking star concludes in the segment shared via TikTok, you should be left with "crisp, tender, and delicious" sprouts ready for serving in about 45 minutes as long as you don't skimp on that all-important butter both in the pan and on top of the sprouts.