Spruitjesstoemp

Brussels comfort food: potatoes mashed with Brussels sprouts, butter, cream, and nutmeg, served with sausage

Origin: Brussels, Belgium

Stoemp is the great everyday comfort dish of Brussels and Brabant, potatoes mashed together with a vegetable and enriched with butter, cream, and nutmeg, served in a soft, rough mound beside a sausage, a pork chop, or a few rashers of bacon. It is the Belgian cousin of the Dutch stamppot, looser and creamier than its northern relative and almost always finished with a knob of butter melting into the top. Where the Dutch most often make their stamppot with kale or endive, the Brussels version made with the city's own sprout, spruitjesstoemp, has a particular local rightness. The dish belongs to the bistros and homes of Brussels, the unpretentious heart of the city's everyday cooking, and it is the warming food of the Belgian winter. The Brussels sprouts are boiled until tender and then either folded through the mashed potato in pieces or roughly crushed into it, so that the whole takes on the sweet, nutty, faintly cabbagey flavour of the sprout, cut through with black pepper and nutmeg. A good stoemp is not a smooth purée but a coarse, textured mash with the vegetable clearly present. Served with a grilled sausage and perhaps a spoonful of its juices, spruitjesstoemp is the Brussels sprout at its most homely and most local, the vegetable of the city eaten in the city's own beloved style.

Ingredients

Stoemp

800 g floury potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
500 g Brussels sprouts, trimmed
60 g butter
100 ml cream or whole milk, warmed
1 onion, finely chopped
grating of nutmeg
salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve

4 good pork sausages, to serve

Method

Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender, about 18 to 20 minutes. Drain well and let the steam die down.
Meanwhile, boil the Brussels sprouts in salted water until tender, 7 to 9 minutes, then drain. Chop them roughly, or crush them a little.
Soften the chopped onion gently in a little of the butter until sweet and translucent but not coloured.
Mash the potatoes with the remaining butter and the warm cream until soft. Fold in the chopped sprouts and the softened onion, keeping the texture coarse and rustic.
Season generously with salt, black pepper, and plenty of nutmeg.
Meanwhile fry or grill the sausages until browned and cooked through. Serve the stoemp in mounds with a sausage alongside and a little extra butter melting on top.

Notes

Stoemp can be made with bacon stirred through, or topped with crisp lardons. It is traditionally served with sausage, but is equally good with a pork chop, a fried egg, or roast meats. Leftover stoemp fries beautifully into crisp cakes the next day.

The Gastrographer

Name: Spruitjesstoemp
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Belgium
Ingredients: 800 g floury potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks; 500 g Brussels sprouts, trimmed; 60 g butter; 100 ml cream or whole milk, warmed; 1 onion, finely chopped; grating of nutmeg; salt and freshly ground black pepper; 4 good pork sausages, to serve

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control