As an adult I still sometimes have to trick myself into eating my vegetables. I made these roasted 고추장 (gochujang) honey Brussels sprouts yesterday that really did do the trick:
고추장 (gochujang) honey Brussels sprouts
Here’s my incredibly imprecise recipe.
고추장 (gochujang) honey Brussels sprouts
- Brussels sprouts (you could probably do this with carrots also or any vegetable that is good for roasting)
- Honey (or any kind of sweet nectar—I used maple syrup this time)
- Lemon (or any kind of citrus/acid)
- Garlic powder
- Gochujang
- Wash your sprouts, cut off the stems, and slice in half the long way (if the bulbous part is a head and the stem is a neck, cut it in a coronal or midline sagittal plane). Check for aphids. If you have them, sorry.
- Dry your sprouts. You don’t have to go wild but the drier they are, the crispier they will turn out. I just blotted them with a paper towel and let them sit in the colander for about 5 minutes.
- Get a big bowl and dump the prepared sprouts in with enough olive oil to lightly coat them, plus a punch of salt and pepper. Some people say you shouldn’t salt before roasting because salt pulls out the moisture, like how osmotic pressure pulls water out of cells when there’s too much sodium in extracellular fluid in a human person, but I don’t think it makes a terribly big difference. The consequence of slightly dry vegetables is also less than that of massive intracellular fluid shifts in a human person.
- Roast the sprouts until they’re browned and crispy. In my convection oven at 425ºF, this ended up being about 30 minutes.
- While the sprouts are roasting, mix together the 고추장 (gochujang), honey (or maple syrup), lemon juice, and garlic powder in a small bowl until the consistency is similar to that of the honey. For a bag of about 15ish sprouts, I used a heaping spoonful of 고추장, a similar amount of maple syrup, three shakes of garlic powder, and enough lemon juice to thin it out so that it was stirrable (I think it was half a lemon). I then added more garlic powder to taste because you can’t go wrong with garlic powder, unless you are serving vampires or strict Buddhists.
- When the sprouts are done, dump them back into the big bowl you used to toss them with the olive oil (ugh, I washed it already, this is what I get for trying to clean as I go), drizzle the 고추장 honey mixture over, and toss like a bingo machine tossing bingo balls.
- Serve, enjoy, and go on with your day.