Sous Vide 1 hour brussels sprouts with bacon and garlic
For our annual Thanksgiving potluck this year, I volunteered to contribute a non-exciting side dish of brussels sprouts and I was determined to use sous vide to try to create something spectacular.
Short version: this recipe is damn tasty and very easy.
Long version: read the recipe, make it, and let me know how it turned out 🙂
Unbelievably tasty and very simple recipe that turns those ordinary brussels sprouts you hated as a child into something you and your family will love.
Note: I use a 50 minute sous vide cook time instead of 1 hour because I find that the sprouts will come out overdone when you combine it with the oven time for blackening.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
- Heat the sous vide bath to 183F.
- Wash the brussels sprouts, pat them dry with paper towels and set aside.
- Heat a frying pan on medium and when at temperature, cook the bacon strips until they are crispy. Fight your inclination to toss the accumulated bacon fat 🙂
- Take the chopped garlic and fry it to golden brown in the bacon fat, about 1 min. Be careful not to burn the garlic.
- Pour the bacon fat and garlic into a bowl or container of your choice. I prefer dumping straight into a pyrex measuring cup since it makes it easier to pour into your vacuum seal bag later.
- Put the brussels sprouts into your bag you're using for vacuum sealing, or a ziploc bag if you're using the water displacement method.
- Pour the bacon fat and garlic mixture into the bag with the brussels sprouts, and mix up the bag a bit to spread the goodness around.
- Using a pepper mill, put 1 turn of black pepper to the bag.
- Seal the bag. If you're using a vacuum sealer, take care to make sure the brussels sprouts are in a single layer and you put them as close together as possible. This will minimize air pockets which will be a total pain in the butt later when you're trying to keep it submerged under water.
- Drop the bag into the sous vide bath for 50 mins. Due to the air pockets, I had to use a few different plates to keep all parts of the bag completely submerged.
- 15 mins before the sous vide time is done, preheat your oven to 400F.
- Cut open the bag of brussels sprouts and spread in a single layer on a large cookie sheet.
- Put the tray of sprouts in the oven and cook for 5-7 mins, until they are slightly blackened.
- Remove from oven and serve immediately for best results, or put it covered under foil for up to an hour without reheating.
Notes
This recipe scales up and down quite easily. For example, for Thanksgiving this year, I cooked 6 pounds to feet a whack of people.
The most difficult part is getting a container large enough sous vide all the brussels sprouts and weight them down since they will float like crazy due to the air trapped between the sprouts.
14 thoughts on “Sous Vide 1 hour brussels sprouts with bacon and garlic”
Would it be easier to freeze the bacon fat, then the vacuum machine can suck more air out without the issue of sucking out the bacon fat as well
I made this and it was delicious.
Awesome!
It’s actually not a problem due to the bacon fat. It’s due to the brussel sprouts being spherical, so air is trapped between them.
I don’t see where the bacon gets added to the mix? I see that the bacon fat goes in the bag with the sprouts, but when is the bacon added? Is it just chopped and tossed in after the sprouts come out of the oven? That seems most likely, but I thought I’d check.
Done this both ways, prefer adding bacon bits just before serving. Even crispy bacon will become soggy in the sous vide bag while cooking the sprouts. Some pieces will regain their crisp during the 5 to 10 minutes in the 400ºF oven, but not all of them. We prefer to sprinkle the bacon bits over the bowl of ready to serve sprouts, much like you would with a salad.
After trying it a few times, I’d agree with this comment to add them after they’ve cooked. As long as you’re cooking the sprouts in the bacon fat, you’ll get that great porky flavor without the actual bacon cooking along with it.
Not sure why you would cook them for 50 minutes sous vide when you could halve the sprouts and cooking them in the bacon grease and garlic in the pan in 10-12 minutes or pan in the oven for a little longer. Same thing.
We liked cooking them this way for a few reasons:
1. Perfectly cooked, exactly the same way every time.
2. Almost completely hands off cooking, no watching it.
3. The bacon and garlic flavors more deeply penetrate the brussels sprouts, so more flavorful.
4. This is a sous vide cooking blog, and we like to cook things that way 🙂
Nice recipe. Will try that this week!
Thanks for this awesome Blog btw. Since Im pretty new to the sous vide business there’s a lot of inspiration to find here.
Just one thing: speaking as an European it would be cool to also have the Celsius besides the Fahrenheit value. Sure, I can look it up on Google but in my opinion it would be another great service for readers like me on a great website.
Regards from Germany
Jens
Thanks for taking the time to comment and for reading our blog!
Great suggestion on including celcius, we will try to do that moving forward.
If you’re having trouble with your cooking bags floating
Great recipe! Suggestion you can throw a clean spoon into the Ziploc or Vacuum bag to weigh it down and keep the Brussel sprouts from floating.
Carlos: great idea!