When I was watching the most recent season of Top Chef, specifically Last Chance Kitchen, I saw chef Sara Bradley making this amazing cabbage dish, made from curing the cabbage with salt and sugar, and then “charring the sh*t out of it”. The end result was cabbage that was tender and soft on the inside, but super crispy and smoky on the exterior. She served it with shaved raw apple, an apple puree, and an apple-bacon jus, and it looked amazing. Now I did not want to copy her dish verbatim, but I definitely took inspiration from that. I personally have had a charred cabbage dish at Charcoal in Venice Beach a few years ago, and I really liked the concept of roasting cabbage until it’s dark like that. In this case, I wanted to make a version that was more like a side dish, and I went with Brussels sprouts, since they are basically just mini cabbages. With the sprouts, I cut them in half, and tossed them with sugar, cooking sake, and salt. That helps to do a similar cure that chef Sara had on her cabbage, while simultaneously adding in some umami and sweetness by way of the cooking sake. I am rinsing the cure off the sprouts and patting them dry prior to cooking them, since the sugar and sake will just burn when roasted and render the sprouts carcinogenically inedible instead of just charred black. I am roasting the sprouts in bacon fat, and then just to use the same pan, deglazing that pan once the sprouts are done cooking with apple juice, cider vinegar, and butter to make a pan sauce to serve with the sprouts and the crispy-rendered bacon bits. All in all, it is a really simple side dish, but it can convert people who normally hate Brussels sprouts into actively eating them!

For the cured-roasted Brussels sprouts:
1/2 pound Brussels sprouts
3 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp cooking sake
2 tsp salt
3 strips bacon, diced

Slice the Brussels sprouts in half and toss with the sugar, cooking sake, and salt. Allow that to sit at room temperature for about 10-15 minutes. In a nonstick, ovenproof pan, preferably a cast iron, render the bacon on medium heat until crispy and all of the fat as been cooked out. Fish out the crispy bacon at this point. Rinse the sprouts with water and pat dry. Place the sprouts in the bacon fat pan, flat side down, and roast at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes. Toss the charred Brussels sprouts with the crispy bacon and keep in a warm place, like an oven preheated to 200 degrees F. Keep the nonstick pan that you roasted the sprouts in for the jus.

For the apple-bacon jus:
6oz apple juice
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
reserved pan from the bacon/Brussels sprouts
1 tbsp unsalted butter

Add apple juice and cider vinegar to the pan that you roasted the Brussels sprouts and bacon in. Stir on medium heat until the liquid has been reduced by 1/4 and the browned bits on the bottom of the pan have dissolved into the liquid. Add the butter into the liquid, off heat, and stir until the butter is melted in as well. Pass through a sieve to remove any lumps.