Photo: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Cruciferous vegetables, like the Brussels sprout, are hearty, bitter, and tough. Roasting them in a hot oven is an excellent hands-off way to imbue them with flavor and soften them up without losing that distinctive chew. Typically, roasting Brussels sprouts involves halving them, and placing them cut-side down to char on the pan. Somehow browning this side became the “right” side. While it can be visually appealing, it doesn’t always go according to plan. They can easily become stuck sprouts, which leads to torn, squished, mutilated sprouts. Luckily there’s a simple way to avoid this: Flip the script on your Brussels and roast them cut-side up.
Brussels sprouts are wonderfully stinky and bitter, but that’s not the only reason we love them. They’re special because immediately underneath the durable outer leaves is a tender tawny tangle of baby leaves and the young stem. When you split large sprouts in half, exposing the delicate center, and place the flat-side flush against the sheet pan, steam gets trapped in the pocket between the metal pan and the tough outer leaves on top. The tender leaves in the center steam and get soft, which is nice; however, if these leaves don’t brown completely and detach from the metal, they’re likely to stick instead.
Instead, after you split the sprouts in half and thoroughly coat them in their usual oil and seasoning treatment, lay them out on the sheet pan in a single layer with their round bellies down, and the flat-side up. They’ll roll around a bit when you move the pan, and some will lay tilted off to one side, but as long as they don’t flip over completely, you’re in good shape. Slide the pan into a screaming hot oven and roast away. The shape of the round side only provides one small point of contact with the pan, and as the vegetable softens, you’ll still get a lovely char there and along the top edges. This arrangement provides more ventilation under and around the sprouts, which means no trapped steam making them mushy. Most importantly, the tough outer leaves are protecting the delicate inner leaves, and due to the improved air circulation, they have absolutely no interest in getting stuck to the pan. Allow the sprouts to cool, and enjoy the easiest time in recent memory plucking beautifully charred Brussels sprouts from your roasting pan.
