Crispy Charred Roasted Brussel Sprouts With Balsamic Vinegar Recipe

Hi, I'm Eric with Simply Elegant Home Cooking. Today I'm going to show you one of my all-time favorite side dishes. We're going to be doing crispy charred brussel sprouts. This is a very stripped down version of the dish. I have other variations where I throw in shallots, fresh herbs, sometimes I use bacon or pancetta, but I'm going to show you a very basic version because a lot of times you need a very basic side dish to pair with a more elaborate main course, but this doesn't lack in flavor or style, so stick around and I'll show you how it's done. So for our charred brussel sprouts, I have about a pound of them. I have washed and dried the brussel sprouts. Now you could certainly double this recipe and use two pounds to feed a large crowd. And the most important step when you make brussel sprouts, well there's two of them actually. Number one, you want to use a very high quality thick pan like this for your sheet pan. Make sure you get a good one. That's number one. Number two, you want to be sure to roast them at high temperature. So I'm going to preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. So I got that set and what I'm actually going to do, I'm going to take this sheet pan and put it in the oven and allow it to preheat in the oven while we prep the brussel sprouts. And prepping these brussel sprouts is really, really easy. All you want to do is cut off that end and then you want to just cut them in half like so. And I'm going keep these pieces of leaves that fall up. These crisp up nicely in the oven so don't throw those out. You only want to discard that rough piece of the stem that we cut off. And here's what your brussel sprout should look after you've cut them all in half. And the prep for these is super simple. Once you got them cut in half, you just want to take all of those halves as well as those leaves, put them in a big bowl like this. You just want to drizzle with some high quality olive oil like so. And you want to season them very liberally. I'm using sea salt and you want to get these pretty salty because they're going to crisp up nicely, almost like a potato chip. And that salt is going to go really well with it. And I'm going to also add some black pepper. And once your brussel sprouts are oiled and heavily seasoned, you just want to mix this thoroughly just to get everything evenly incorporated with that salt and pepper and olive oil. And this next step is really cool because we used high heat and because we preheated that sheet pan. These are going to sizzle as soon as they hit the pan. So what you want to do, you want to get your brussel sprouts on there and then you want to flip them if need be until they're cut side down like so. And this is just going to help sear that exterior and get them nice and browned and charred. And once they're all flipped, you just want to take them and throw them right back in that 425 degree oven. We're going to let them go for about 20 minutes untouched. Okay and after about 18 minutes, I took them out. Usually in that 18 to 20 minute range is what you're looking for. Now these are going to go back in but what we want to do now is we want to flip them. And you can see these got some really nice color. Do not be afraid of that char. That's going to be amazing color. These look absolutely perfect. So I'm going to just continue flipping these and then we're going to put them back into the oven. Okay so these are all flipped. I'm going to pop them back in and they'll only need about probably six to eight minutes at this point. We're just going to eyeball them. Okay and just a few minutes later, that's what we are looking at. These look absolutely perfect. And this next step is optional but I really like it. If you have a very high quality aged balsamic vinegar, you can go in with just a small amount. You'll notice mine's real thick and syrupy. If you don't have a really high quality one, you want to skip that step. And less is definitely more. Just use a little bit if you use it at all. Then we're just going to move these around a bit. These are ready to be served up. One thing that's just really important, that step of preheating the pan. Very very important step because we were able to get a really nice char on these. You can even hear how crispy they are. But if we hadn't done that step, it would have taken so much time that we would have turned them to mush. If you don't do that, you're either going to overcook the interior or undercook the exteriors. That's a very important step. Okay and here's the finished dish. Crispy charred Brussels sprouts. Let's dig in and give these a try. So there's just amazing flavor. The way we cooked that and got that nice char on the exterior. Don't fool yourself into thinking that those are burnt. These look absolutely perfect when they have those dark crispy exteriors. They're so good, nice and crispy. We used a lot of salt which really really complements this dish well. And if you use it, that balsamic vinegar just balances out the saltiness. This dish is really good. One of my favorite side dishes of all time. I really hope you enjoyed this recipe. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe. I'm Eric from Simply Elegant Home Cooking and I'll see you again real soon.