The homely Belgian winter side: Brussels sprouts boiled tender and tossed with butter and crisp smoked bacon
Origin: Brabant, Belgium
From the journey of Brussels Sprout.
Spruitjes met spek, Brussels sprouts with bacon, is the plainest and most beloved way to eat the sprout in the land that gave it its name. In Brabant, the duchy around Brussels where the sprout was bred, the buds are a staple green of the winter, and the everyday treatment could hardly be simpler: the trimmed sprouts are boiled or steamed until just tender, then turned in butter with a generous handful of crisp, smoky bacon lardons. The smoked pork tempers the faint cabbagey edge of the sprout, the butter rounds it, and the dish goes to the table beside roast meats, sausages, or a Sunday joint through the cold months. It is home cooking rather than restaurant fare, the kind of dish a Flemish or Brussels household makes without a recipe, and it reflects the sprout's place in Belgian life as a comforting, seasonal, unfussy vegetable. The key, as Belgian cooks know, is not to overcook the sprouts to the grey, sulphurous softness that gave the vegetable its bad name elsewhere, but to stop while they still have a little bite and their bright colour. This is the ancestral dish of the Brussels sprout, the simplest expression of the vegetable in its Brabant homeland, and the model from which the chestnut-and-bacon versions of Britain and Germany ultimately descend.
For a slightly richer version, finish with a splash of cream. Halved sprouts caramelise more readily if you let them sit cut-side down in the pan for a minute before tossing. Leftovers are excellent fried up the next day with cold potato.
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