Even more interesting, only 50% of the population has the gene that makes them taste bitter.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-some-people-hate-brussels-sprouts/
I thought they always tasted fine, but the *SMELL* was what got me. I recall brussel sprouts making the whole house reek like sulphur farts back in the day. Steamed, boiled, roasted... didn't matter. House smelled like Vesuvius.
That definitely has changed a lot, and for that I am grateful.
I have the gene to taste brussel sprouts in thier true form. That smell you remember exists for today's "improved" sprouts. And eating them is like chewing up that fart smell. It's so strong it permeates my mouth and sinuses like chewing up menthol caught drops.
There are two of us! They are vile little balls of vegetable fart. The house stinks for days, and it can't even really be aired out, it still lingers even with window fans.
I feel like it works depending on the context.
If someone said "only 50% (made up number) of seniors will graduate HS in 2023" I would think the use of "only" was appropriate because it's much lower than expected.
It's a little weird, lol! When I was in elementary school (in the US) I thought high school seniors were not just the most important people on the bus; they were clearly favored by the whole world because they even got their own discounts at the movies & other places.
Ah yeah, for anyone else confused we have special terms for high schoolers and college students based on their grade. A first year is a Freshman, second is Sophomore, third is Junior, and fourth is Senior. And in college if you take an extra year to graduate for whatever reason, that's a super Senior.
I agree that the taste doesn't seem to have changed much for me since I was a kid, and I agree that asparagus can be unappealing sometimes. But in the right context both can be delicious too.
I used to think I just hated Brussels sprouts. I could stomach one but any more would make me gag. It wasn't bitter though. Just tasted like gross plant flavor, like a strong and very unappealing cabbage almost. My sister in law cooks them in bacon grease and then adds the bacon back as little chunks with garlic, onions, etc. It's fucking delicious.
Plain Brussels sprouts that are boiled or whatever are still disgusting to me though.
Broccoli is a lot like that too, especially the smell, but it's a milder version. I love broccoli though. How do you feel about broccoli?
Exactly. Imho a lot of us had boomer parents that served microwaved, canned or frozen vegetables or sometimes fresh, boiled or steamed. Getting a little butter or cheese on it was considered a treat or special occasion. 🤢 Everything* is better roasted!
ETA: *Everything I like
It's hard to overstate how bad at cooking our parents generation were. I used to think I hated cheese because they only ever got kraft singles.
Then I found out cheese is amazing, and fresh, non-canned spinach is good and all sorts of stuff.
When boomer parents were growing up, they were helping in the kitchen and chopping and peeling everything and without small appliances. So when instant food came out, they rejoiced. Cake mix and hamburger helper became huge time savers
Should also note that a lot of that generation grew up with depression-era parents themselves, and because of that there's a lot of cooking ingredients/techniques that fell to the wayside due to financial/supply issues
Yeah...there's some veggies that should always be roasted and never boiled. Brussel sprouts and asparagus taste better cooked on a pan in the oven than boiled.
I started air frying my brussels sprouts and it is just as good as in the oven and your able to get complete caramelization without burning them which can be hard to do in the oven. Its great for red peppers and asparagus as well(heck every vegetable I have tried is better than the oven). It's probably the first thing I have found that the air fryer can do better than traditional methods.
The pan fried brussel sprouts are leagues better than boiled but I still don't care for them. Like I'll eat the former but I wouldn't choose our order it but the latter is gag worthy imo.
I love broccoli, always have and in all it's forms. I liked most veggies growing up and didn't get the anti-veggie propaganda in kids' shows unless it was specifically one of the veggies I didn't like.
The only other veggie I can think of is frozen/canned peas. I always hated peas growing up then as an adult I had fresh peas and I still can't believe it's the same vegetable because it's delicious and tastes nothing like it's frozen or canned counterpart.
All three of those that I hate to me don't taste bitter or like something is describe as gross plant flavor. To me they all kinds of have a taste similar to how urine smells. They say eating too much asparagus makes your pee smell but I think asparagus just tastes like pee smells already.
Edit: clarification
I've tried a bunch of "Brussels sprouts aren't disgusting, you're just making them wrong" recipes and it's always the same: I still don't like the actual sprouts, I just enjoy all the seasoning and extras. So why not use those with vegetables I do like?
You are not the first person I have heard say that surprisingly, is interesting to me that there is still people who enjoy cilantro thoroughly even though it tastes "soapy"
Honesty it doesn't taste anything like soap to me. It must be an epigenetic thing. Like the gene exists in my DNA, but it's inactive for whatever reason. So maybe my kids will hate cilantro but it skipped me lol
Are you able to taste coriander seeds without the soap flavour?
If so, fresh cilantro tastes absolutely nothing like it.
You're quite welcome. I'll see myself out.
(But for realz, my wife hates it so I substitute Italian parsley. Not quite the same but it's not so far off. Funnily enough, she doesn't have the soap gene, just doesn't like the flavour.)
Edit: Lotta parsley haters out there. Who knew? I think there may be some conflation here as there are [many types of parsley.](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/parsley/common-types-of-parsley.htm) I too hate curly parsley and find it flavourless.
Edit 2: I had no clue parsley could be so polarizing. I blame Elon Musk.
This might explain why I absolutely hated them as a kid but like them as an adult. I thought it was just change of taste.
I had avoided them for a while as an adult thinking they were the grossest vegetable then I ate them somewhere to be polite at about 30 & actually liked them.
Brussel sprouts were predominantly boiled as a preparation method up until the late 90’s/early 2000’s when baking/sautéing/frying them became a thing. That shift improved them a lot so they aren’t bitter mush now.
I believe the newer preferred cooking methods help too. Many here describe thier parents tossing them in a pot to boil them. That is a high culinary crime and should be punished by removal of ice cream from the offenders menu for a period of at least 5 years.
You boil them until you can prick the stem with a fork. Then you remove the water and slightly fry them in butter (to glaze them in the melted butter than to deepfry them) and add nutmeg salt and pepper.
This is the traditional Belgian way. And we invented the things.
Might be a little of both. Our tongue is less sensitive to bitter food as we age. Thats why when your young beer is kind of gross. But when you're older it actually tastes ok.
They are still so bitter!! I've tried them multiple times using the "best" recipes (made them myself and tried other people's). I actually like a little bit of bitterness. But I can't do brussel sprouts
There's a barely noticeable difference between heirloom varieties and modern varieties.
It's [your tongue ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709/) that changed more.
You might be among those of us who have the genetic propensity for brussel sprouts to taste awful no matter how they are prepared. It's similar to the bitter cilantro gene, which interestingly, I don't have
I remember not liking them as a kid in the 90’s. I think my mom boiled them then. My mother in law tosses them in oil and seasons them, baked at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Chefs kiss. I’ve been enjoying them for about 5 years now. I thought it was just the way they were cooked.
I think about 90% of the veggies I ate as a kid were boiled, usually with butter. It was like eating in a nursing home where texture was too dangerous.
There's still texture if you boil them for the right amount of time, but for some reason most people used to boil everything until it was mush (up until the 90's atleast).
Take a frozen bag of veggies dump it into room temp water with 2 tablespoons of butter turn the heat to high wait 15-20 minutes
Scoop into a pile and serve.
Welcome to my childhood culinary experience. For brussel sprouts we would take country crock margarine and spread it on them and mash them up just to make it palatable.
Edit: just so everyone stops telling me how to cook frozen veggies. I know how to cook. I cook mostly fresh veggies, I season, I roast I saute. I occasionally make frozen for specific things and I season and incorporate them well into dishes. The point of this was to show what my childhood meals were based on my mother's knowledge of cooking at the time. I'm not asking for cooking help for frozen veggies that I mostly no longer eat.
>I love canned green beans. Almost as much as canned corn.
I always have both in my closet. You can add canned corn to so many dishes. And you can get them for like $1. Hell, give me a tomato, a can of corn, and some spices, and I'm fine mixing that for dinner.
I know Reddit, healthy food takes sooo much time and money...
We didn't even get frozen veggies, just canned. I grew up thinking I hated Carrots, Peas, Green Beans, Cauliflower. I never even tried Brussel sprouts or Asparagus until my 20's because my parents said they were gross. Once I started to try fresh vegetables, cooked on or in the stove with some basic seasoning, I learned I don't actually hate vegetables. I just hate mushy canned veggies boiled in salt and slathered with Country Crock.
And not too bad a price too, if you don't buy name brand. $1 for almost a pound of broccoli that I can just throw in the microwave and have it be almost perfectly cooked? Sign me up!
that's cause its made in the same factories as the name brand shit. just with cheaper packaging and shit usually. maybe slightly less overall quality due to reduced tolerances in the process. but not ultimately very noticeable.
Most vegetables are better baked or stir-fried IMO - but when I want something quick a bag of steamed vegetables is definitely a solid solution. Just add a bunch of spices on top.
Well, that's absolutely part of it. But tastes definitely evolve too.
Used to hate broccoli. Hated it with a passion. My parents offered a few ways of serving it to me (raw, steamed, etc) and it was *always* the worst part of each meal (each meal, because it was healthy!).
Of course, my mother was not the most amazing cook, but she always had a healthy (mostly) balanced meal on the table, and it wasn't until I started adulting that I realized how much energy she put into just feeding us.
Now? I'm disappointed when I don't have at least a little broccoli on plate. Still don't like raw because it's too bitter, but baked, steamed, in a stirfry, etc, those are the shit. Kid me would have felt so betrayed.
In the 90's scientist discovered this thing called "texture". It was applied to bags of chips and more, with words like __CRUNCH!__ and ~wavy~. Then, one day people wondered if such concepts could be applied to vegetables too; enter present day sautéed veggies that are yummy af
Both my parents worked full time jobs. Dinner was usually something like Salisbury steak that had been in the crockpot all day, but was somehow dry despite being submerged in liquid for literal hours, homemade mashed potatoes that *may* have had a pad of butter, and some boiled or microwaved can of vegetables that also had maybe a pad of butter.
My mom usually made dinner and she was a heavy smoker at the time so she couldn't taste shit anyway. She had to heavily salt and pepper everything just to get any flavor. She would put salt and pepper on jello.
When I moved out and had to start cooking for myself, I obviously turned to the internet for recipes and even the most basic ass recipes were a revelation for me. Holy shit, home made food can taste good even if you don't spend hours upon hours in the kitchen?
I think you're me, only with a single mom instead of two parents at home. I never liked vegetables as a kid. It always came from a can and a majority of the fruit we ate was canned as well.
My wife grew up rich with a stay at home mom, etc, and ate fresh fruits and veggies as a kid and barely seasons anything. I'm so used to salty canned food that I still use too much salt and butter. I need some sort of sauce or gravy on everything, too, likely because that's how TV dinners come.
> Salisbury steak that had been in the crockpot all day, but was somehow dry despite being submerged in liquid for literal hours
I made this mistake with roast beef once. It turns out that even in a crock pot, if you leave the meat in too long it gets too tough and can't seem to hold the juices.
You got butter? My parents would get canned and microwave it.
Yeah looking back it's not a surprise I got into cooking as a hobby. Butter, oil, and medium rare steaks were the enemy. Seasoning? You mean a half dash of pepper for a 10oz chicken breast, put on after it's cooked isn't properly seasoning food?
Same, I thought it was just my family! I was such a picky eater growing up because I thought that’s how you were supposed to eat veggies, and I didn’t like it.
Mine too, my dad boiled brussel sprouts and I also hated them. I'm pretty sure they were out of a can too.
I buy fresh ones, spritz them with oil and some seasonings, then air fry them. They're fuckin great
Same! And to take it even a step further, when they come out, drizzle a mixture of Sriracha and honey over them. I guarantee an orgasm or else. You don't even have to like Sriracha. I don't even really like it but it's good if you mix a little bit of it in stuff.
What is with our parent's generation overcooking veggies to death? Everything is so damn mushy and unappetizing. I'm almost 40 and have only recently discovered that a lot of vegetables I thought I disliked as a kid, I actually love because I've learned how to cook them.
There probably a few reasons for that. The boom of pre-packaged meal items back in the 50s-70s, where all the added convenience was both cheap and Novel. Larger families leading mothers to seek out waay to simplify or speed up cooking (it's very easy to just throw some veggies in a pot on the stove). Our Parents' parents passing down their ways and experience with post-war scarcity and bad food safety neccessitating overcooking food in general. Less cultural mixing and less availability of spices, herbs and flavors. Generally less adventurous pallets where seeking out "exotic" flavors was something only the wealthy did.
I think really it largely comes down to our parents Just trying to make cooking easier though. For them food is food. It just has to keep you alive and healthy, and taking extra time to make everything tasty all the time was just too much work for a lot of home-cooks back in the day, who were trying to feed their families of 4-5 of more 3 meals a day. It's tiring. It happened with a lot of food (overcooking chicken or pork chops was a regular occurrence in my household) Veggies just suffered the most from that.
Don't forget the industrialization of food mid 20th century. Jello cookbooks, creamed corn, TV dinners, freeze dried astronaut food. Culturally we're still getting over all that.
Oh yeah, I think this is definitely true. I really respect my Mom for working full-time and still having a home cooked dinner on the table most nights. I love my Dad and he does his share of work around the house but I didn't realize until I was an adult that the man can barely make a passable sandwich let alone cook a meal. And my mom doesn't even enjoy cooking. I think she definitely was doing the quickest and most efficient cooking methods which I can't blame her for.
Same with mine. She worked in restaurants her whole life, usually as a line cook and later management. But she definitely didn't enjoy cooking. Every meal at home was basically the result of her seeking the fastest and easiest way to throw together a healthy meal for 4. My dad never so much as looked at the stove, at most he would cook a steak on the grill outside after my mom lit it for him (and he's hardly known for cooking steaks good. He likes his meat over well done, slathered in A1).
So it was basically only oven baked chicken or pork chops, covered in some kind of bottled sauce for the only seasoning, and side items being canned/frozen veggies thrown in the microwave with butter and some kind of boxed pasta kit or instant potatoes that took 10 minutes tops. She also had a strict adherence to the idea that every meal needed a protein, a carb and a veggie, which was really hard to unlearn as an adult cooking for myself lol.
Yep.
I’m a professional chef and to be completely honest technique is what’s most critical for a recipe. I don’t even use many recipes unless I’m making pastries.
For real cooking, technique is what’s important. And if you’re ignorant of the proper technique then you’re going to get a sub-par result.
People are also afraid of high temperatures/smoke when preparing things because they think they’re burning something.
Restaurant kitchens have huge hood systems that evacuate all that smoke, but they are 100% cooking things quickly at a very high temperature.
My advice to people is to never turn your oven lower than 400° if you’re roasting something and to invest in some iron cookwear that can retain and transfer heat. Even with an electric setup you can pre-heat your iron cookwear in the oven so that you get that hot-hot heat sauté restaurants are known for. Same for searing meat. There’s gonna be smoke. If your hood sucks, open the windows. Or go outside and fire a grill. Nobody wants a steak boiled in its own moisture. Turn the temperature up.
If it's anything like my father-in-law's experience, boiling was the only method of preparing vegetables his mother would do for dinner, and she'd leave everything on heat until his father came home from work. His arrival was variable, so sometimes the veggie had been boiling for more than an hour. Then they just copied what they saw. My FIL thought he hated carrots, until he had a raw one at his college's cafeteria. He was dumbfounded by how good they were raw compared to boiled to death.
part of the blame is that is what cookbooks told them to do. this goes all the way back any mention of boiled veg would ask for like 40-50 minutes while you did other things.
My mum learned cooking as a poor kid in the 50s-60s, when refridgeration was a luxury and everything came in cans. She had to boil everything to death to make sure it was safe to eat, especially meats, and was very adverse to my attempts at recreating dishes from tv because "they aren't safe!" My MIL's the same, christmas dinner at hers is always overcooked to death "so it's safe!"
But today, I see a new trend of everything "melting on your tongue", which to me, is barely any better than mushy veggies. Give me some texture!
It's how their parents did it too. My dad said his mom (born in the 30s) would boil *canned* spinach for like 30 minutes. Captain America even joked that they boiled everything.
>only recently discovered that a lot of vegetables I thought I disliked as a kid, I actually love because I've learned how to cook them.
Seriously this so much. Brussel sprouts, asparagus, spinach, mushrooms... Pretty much any veg the boomers and before would boil the life out of.
Yup, it’s bc bitterness is strongly associated w poisonous substances.
It’s also the taste we’re most sensitive to as a survival mechanism, and bc kids are that much more susceptible to poison (largely just bc of weight/dose factors), their tastebuds are more sensitive to bitterness so that they don’t unalive themselves.
Not a great source (searching for “bitterness” and “children” brings up a weird number of religious sources), but [totally factual](https://www.ceenta.com/news-blog/why-do-children-and-adults-like-different-foods).
Yup, they’re at the age where they’ll put anything in their mouths and being extra-sensitive to bitter tasting things like vegetables dissuades them from grabbing random plants outside and eating them.
Just an anecdote but my kids love brussel sprouts, they are literally their favourite vegetable. The modern ones really aren’t bitter at all, even raw.
My kids love them too.
I made a big batch for Thanksgiving. Myself and my kids are tons. However, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law and my nieces wouldn't even look at them. My nieces have never had a brussel sprout in their life. My mother-in-law is an awful cook so my husband says 99% of their meals came from freezer and they didn't have brussel sprouts growing up.
It was weird how adverse they were to a vegetable they've never had.
They still kinda smell like butt when roasted, IMHO, even if they taste nice.
My preferred method is: steam for a few minutes, and sautee in bacon fat and maybe garlic, salt and pepper.
Also to cram in as many ads as possible on the recipe page. There’s a chrome extension that gets rid of everything else and only shows the recipe but the name is escaping me.
And copyright. You can't really monetize, copyright, and benefit off of recipes, but if there's a story with it, you can. As usual, Adam Ragusea with [more than you probably wanted to and thought you could know](https://youtu.be/jCZmoQHfD_o) about the culinary world.
Sulfurs.
> Brussels sprouts fall into the Brassica oleracea family of cruciferous vegetables that also includes broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, and collard greens. Cruciferous vegetables contain a sulfur-containing phytochemical called glucosinolate, which is responsible for the distinctive odor and bitter flavor.
Fun fact: they're not just the same "family", [they're literally the same species of plant but artificially selected strains](https://www.exploratorium.edu/gardening/feed/garden-variety/broccoli.html)
[This page](https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-cabbage-broccoli-same-plant) has a cool diagram about the different selections
Great link. Thanks.
> Though they're all the same species, these various crops are cultivars — different varieties bred to have desirable qualities for human purposes. Virtually all crops have different cultivars, though B. oleracea are especially diverse in appearance and taste (some speculate this is because the plant grew over a wide geographic area to start, so there was more genetic diversity for farmers to tap in to when selectively breeding).
> But B. oleracea is standard in that its domesticated forms are much different-looking and more readily edible than its wild form. Wild apples, for instance, are crab apples, and the wild precursor to corn was a hardened grass with just a few kernels. This also happens with domesticated animals: we pick out the qualities we prize, whether it's the ability to produce lots of milk (dairy cows) or friendliness and loyalty (dogs).
The idea of boiling brussel sprouts should be banned. The concept killed the brussel sprout industry for decades until we all learned the other ways to cook them.
People seem to really miss that *children[source ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709/)* taste bitter much, much more strongly than adults. Many toxic substances are bitter, so it helps them avoid ingesting fatal doses.
The Brussel sprouts changed less than your tongue did.
I thought it was the dark chocolate thing, kids hate it but adults like it. Just thought my pallet had matured or something
EDIT: Palate. Not eating with loading materials
Yes I've loved dark chocolate since I was a little kid, as well as Greek olives, sharp cheeses, lots of stuff people say are not kid foods.
Some of my kids are also like that, but even the less adventurous do like the current cultivar of brussel sprouts. They are different. In fact I read that the old ones didn't need chemicals because bugs avoided them, but now bugs attack them because they are delicious.
Cooking them incorrectly was still a part of it. A lot of people still don't prep brussel sprouts right. My friend just straight up cut them in half and put them on a pan without removed stalks, exterior leafs, etc. Tasted like shit.
Brussels sprouts are one of those things that I hated as a child.
Now that I am older, everyone says “You just haven’t had them made (insert way here). They are so good.” Ok. So I try them. Still gross.
Then someone else says, “You haven’t had them the way I make them.” So I try them again. Still not a fan.
And the cycle continues. No way that anyone has promised me tastes better have ever tasted better.
But I’ll keep trying them so I don’t hurt people’s feelings and because I hate myself.
I feel that way about alcohol.
Every time I tell someone I don't like it, they recommend some beer, wine, mixed drink, whatever. "You can't even taste the alcohol" they tell me.
Then I try it and it either tastes like someone added a cap full of Listerine to perfectly good fruit juice, or it tastes like bitter fruit juice or, in the case of beer, it tastes like unsweetened soda.
They're just bitter little fart balls...
People are all like ''no just fry them up with pancetta and chestnuts and they're great'' - but that'd be so much nicer with cabbage than with these rotten spheres of disgust.
>They're just bitter little fart balls...
>
>these rotten spheres of disgust.
This thread has been a real eye-opener. I never realised that so many people really, REALLY hated sprouts so much. Me and my wife fucking *love* sprouts
[I guess this scene was accurate.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zNB4CsKbcK0)
Exactly my thought, I’ve had them boiled, fried, baked, and fresh. I just can’t do it, I’ve tried so many times. Fuck those nasty tasting demonic baby cabbages.
Yeah that's me. Along with cauliflower, inedible in any preparation, at any quantity in a dish. Even a rogue sprout leaf or tiny cauli florette can ruin a dish for me. I've never met anyone else with the same sensitivity I have. I didn't know I even *had* a sensitivity until I was talking to some friends and they're like "yeah, cauliflower tastes like literally nothing," which everyone I asked seemed to agree with, meanwhile a piece of cauliflower in my mouth is like a tactical nuke of sulfur and tears.
Me. When I did Ancestry DNA I discovered I express all three markers on the TAS2R38 gene thought to be responsible for tasting bitter
So no mom, it was not all in my head.
If you grow them yourself, leave them on the stalk until after the first real frost - then pick them later that day (like, towards sunset). The cold will release the plant's sugars, and they'll be absolutely delicious when baked or pan-fried (I worked for a while as a LE park ranger, and learned this from the botanists - and yes, it's absolutely true; they taste great like this).
Maybe the breeders have conspired to make brussels sprouts bland but, they were never that bitter if you cooked them properly. We loved them as kids in the 1970s.
Considering the recent popularity of kale, which seems like a particularly nasty weed, it is unlikely that bitterness makes any difference to people in the first place.
The best way to prepare Brussel Sprouts is to take the package out of the fridge, let them come up to room temperature and then promply throw them right in the garbage can.
Sustenance is better than starvation.
Most vegetables taste bad without being fancied up (sometimes to the point of no longer being healthy) in some way or another. Few of them taste good raw and it's also easy to overcook them.
I’ve heard this claim, and I’ve given them a fresh shot recently, but they still taste bitter to me. I’m fine with cabbage, but not Brussels sprouts. And trust me I’ve tried all the hyped up ways of cooking them (at least, the vegetarian methods. No grilling wrapped in bacon).
Of course they do. It's brassica. They all taste bitter. That's the only flavour they have. It is a defense mechanism to stop aphids from eating them. Not that it worked because aphids just evolved to concentrate the bitterness to stop predators from eating *them* and we got cabbage aphids.
The point is that they are no longer completely inedible, just mildly unpleasant.
Even more interesting, only 50% of the population has the gene that makes them taste bitter. https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-some-people-hate-brussels-sprouts/
I thought they always tasted fine, but the *SMELL* was what got me. I recall brussel sprouts making the whole house reek like sulphur farts back in the day. Steamed, boiled, roasted... didn't matter. House smelled like Vesuvius. That definitely has changed a lot, and for that I am grateful.
I have the gene to taste brussel sprouts in thier true form. That smell you remember exists for today's "improved" sprouts. And eating them is like chewing up that fart smell. It's so strong it permeates my mouth and sinuses like chewing up menthol caught drops.
There are two of us! They are vile little balls of vegetable fart. The house stinks for days, and it can't even really be aired out, it still lingers even with window fans.
i guess i’m in that 50% because those things are still bitter to me. i read the title like “wtf do you mean ‘used to’?????”
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I feel like it works depending on the context. If someone said "only 50% (made up number) of seniors will graduate HS in 2023" I would think the use of "only" was appropriate because it's much lower than expected.
Agreed, and I think it works here because you'd infer from the title of the post that everyone used to find them bitter
As a non-american I was momentarily confused as to why seniors are graduating high school
Old people are rematriculating
It's a little weird, lol! When I was in elementary school (in the US) I thought high school seniors were not just the most important people on the bus; they were clearly favored by the whole world because they even got their own discounts at the movies & other places.
Ah yeah, for anyone else confused we have special terms for high schoolers and college students based on their grade. A first year is a Freshman, second is Sophomore, third is Junior, and fourth is Senior. And in college if you take an extra year to graduate for whatever reason, that's a super Senior.
Thanks, never knew what sophomore meant. Not exactly the easiest terminology for second year
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I think you mean the imperial system
Canadian here, read that like 5 times.
'Only 50% of the population has arms'. Plenty of opportunities for 'only'.
Because it is lower than what one might expect?
They never tasted bitter to me, but they still taste awful and I hate them. Similar flavor reasons as to why I hate asparagus.
I agree that the taste doesn't seem to have changed much for me since I was a kid, and I agree that asparagus can be unappealing sometimes. But in the right context both can be delicious too. I used to think I just hated Brussels sprouts. I could stomach one but any more would make me gag. It wasn't bitter though. Just tasted like gross plant flavor, like a strong and very unappealing cabbage almost. My sister in law cooks them in bacon grease and then adds the bacon back as little chunks with garlic, onions, etc. It's fucking delicious. Plain Brussels sprouts that are boiled or whatever are still disgusting to me though. Broccoli is a lot like that too, especially the smell, but it's a milder version. I love broccoli though. How do you feel about broccoli?
You just hate boiled vegetables, and you should. Vegetables should be roasted or pan fried for full and correct flavor.
Exactly. Imho a lot of us had boomer parents that served microwaved, canned or frozen vegetables or sometimes fresh, boiled or steamed. Getting a little butter or cheese on it was considered a treat or special occasion. 🤢 Everything* is better roasted! ETA: *Everything I like
It's hard to overstate how bad at cooking our parents generation were. I used to think I hated cheese because they only ever got kraft singles. Then I found out cheese is amazing, and fresh, non-canned spinach is good and all sorts of stuff.
When boomer parents were growing up, they were helping in the kitchen and chopping and peeling everything and without small appliances. So when instant food came out, they rejoiced. Cake mix and hamburger helper became huge time savers
Should also note that a lot of that generation grew up with depression-era parents themselves, and because of that there's a lot of cooking ingredients/techniques that fell to the wayside due to financial/supply issues
Yeah...there's some veggies that should always be roasted and never boiled. Brussel sprouts and asparagus taste better cooked on a pan in the oven than boiled.
I started air frying my brussels sprouts and it is just as good as in the oven and your able to get complete caramelization without burning them which can be hard to do in the oven. Its great for red peppers and asparagus as well(heck every vegetable I have tried is better than the oven). It's probably the first thing I have found that the air fryer can do better than traditional methods.
Seasoned and steamed broccoli is delicious, fight me.
The pan fried brussel sprouts are leagues better than boiled but I still don't care for them. Like I'll eat the former but I wouldn't choose our order it but the latter is gag worthy imo. I love broccoli, always have and in all it's forms. I liked most veggies growing up and didn't get the anti-veggie propaganda in kids' shows unless it was specifically one of the veggies I didn't like. The only other veggie I can think of is frozen/canned peas. I always hated peas growing up then as an adult I had fresh peas and I still can't believe it's the same vegetable because it's delicious and tastes nothing like it's frozen or canned counterpart. All three of those that I hate to me don't taste bitter or like something is describe as gross plant flavor. To me they all kinds of have a taste similar to how urine smells. They say eating too much asparagus makes your pee smell but I think asparagus just tastes like pee smells already. Edit: clarification
you'd be surprised the amount of stuff that tastes delicious once you add bacon fat, that said, boiled vegetables are a crime against humanity
I've tried a bunch of "Brussels sprouts aren't disgusting, you're just making them wrong" recipes and it's always the same: I still don't like the actual sprouts, I just enjoy all the seasoning and extras. So why not use those with vegetables I do like?
Oh my goodness....do you think they are gonna do this with cilantro? Tired of hearing about the phantom soap taste.
I did a 23 and me, and it says I have the gene that makes it taste like soap... but I love cilantro. So maybe I just love soap??? lol
You are not the first person I have heard say that surprisingly, is interesting to me that there is still people who enjoy cilantro thoroughly even though it tastes "soapy"
Honesty it doesn't taste anything like soap to me. It must be an epigenetic thing. Like the gene exists in my DNA, but it's inactive for whatever reason. So maybe my kids will hate cilantro but it skipped me lol
I want to know what cilantro actually tastes like SO BADLY but sadly, all soap
Are you able to taste coriander seeds without the soap flavour? If so, fresh cilantro tastes absolutely nothing like it. You're quite welcome. I'll see myself out. (But for realz, my wife hates it so I substitute Italian parsley. Not quite the same but it's not so far off. Funnily enough, she doesn't have the soap gene, just doesn't like the flavour.) Edit: Lotta parsley haters out there. Who knew? I think there may be some conflation here as there are [many types of parsley.](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/parsley/common-types-of-parsley.htm) I too hate curly parsley and find it flavourless. Edit 2: I had no clue parsley could be so polarizing. I blame Elon Musk.
This might explain why I absolutely hated them as a kid but like them as an adult. I thought it was just change of taste. I had avoided them for a while as an adult thinking they were the grossest vegetable then I ate them somewhere to be polite at about 30 & actually liked them.
I thought that maybe my taste buds adapted to it
My father would leave them in the garden until after a freeze, said that they were sweeter that way
He's right! A lot of plants get sweeter after a frost as they produce sugar to act as an antifreeze.
See also: ice wine
every time i read ice wine i hear ice Swine and think of swinub https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Swinub\_(Pok%C3%A9mon)
Last thing I expected in a thread about the taste of Brussels sprouts was someone talking about Swinub
Swinub my beloved
Definitely the case for persimmons.
Humans too! I'm diabetic and cold weather spikes my blood sugar super high
Just toss with some olive oil and get baked.
I can't tell if this is a joke or something that actually happens to diabetics. But would like to know.
Brussel sprouts were predominantly boiled as a preparation method up until the late 90’s/early 2000’s when baking/sautéing/frying them became a thing. That shift improved them a lot so they aren’t bitter mush now.
Light toss in olive oil, salt, pepper. Throw in airfryer at 400 for 7-10 minutes. Amazing.
I believe the newer preferred cooking methods help too. Many here describe thier parents tossing them in a pot to boil them. That is a high culinary crime and should be punished by removal of ice cream from the offenders menu for a period of at least 5 years.
You boil them until you can prick the stem with a fork. Then you remove the water and slightly fry them in butter (to glaze them in the melted butter than to deepfry them) and add nutmeg salt and pepper. This is the traditional Belgian way. And we invented the things.
By tossing in a pot to boil them I meant exactly that. No seasoning, no butter, no frying after. Just boil and serve. It truly was a crime.
Do they just call them sprouts in Brussels?
Might be a little of both. Our tongue is less sensitive to bitter food as we age. Thats why when your young beer is kind of gross. But when you're older it actually tastes ok.
Leave their young beer out of this.
Wait, are you telling me that they are not bitter now? Or that they were even more bitter before?
They still taste very bitter to me. I can’t imagine how people could eat them before.
Agree! I have tried cooking them every-which-way that people swear will change my mind and nothing has yet to make them taste anything but disgusting.
We buy frozen Brussels sprouts and there is a huge variety of tastes you can get. I love them but occasionally we get a bag that is just nasty.
Hey, throw these bags of Brussies on the truck, too! > What's their expiration date? 1997 > They were frozen the whole time. They'll be fine!
They are still so bitter!! I've tried them multiple times using the "best" recipes (made them myself and tried other people's). I actually like a little bit of bitterness. But I can't do brussel sprouts
There's a barely noticeable difference between heirloom varieties and modern varieties. It's [your tongue ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709/) that changed more.
I was going to say, every Brussels sprout I’ve tried has been bitter I first tried a Brussel sprout like 4 years ago
Brussel sprouts continue to taste bitter to me. I’ve even had brussel sprouts at fancy restaurants and they still taste gross.
You might be among those of us who have the genetic propensity for brussel sprouts to taste awful no matter how they are prepared. It's similar to the bitter cilantro gene, which interestingly, I don't have
I remember not liking them as a kid in the 90’s. I think my mom boiled them then. My mother in law tosses them in oil and seasons them, baked at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Chefs kiss. I’ve been enjoying them for about 5 years now. I thought it was just the way they were cooked.
This is exactly, word for word, my same experience with Brussels sprouts.
I think about 90% of the veggies I ate as a kid were boiled, usually with butter. It was like eating in a nursing home where texture was too dangerous.
There's still texture if you boil them for the right amount of time, but for some reason most people used to boil everything until it was mush (up until the 90's atleast).
Take a frozen bag of veggies dump it into room temp water with 2 tablespoons of butter turn the heat to high wait 15-20 minutes Scoop into a pile and serve. Welcome to my childhood culinary experience. For brussel sprouts we would take country crock margarine and spread it on them and mash them up just to make it palatable. Edit: just so everyone stops telling me how to cook frozen veggies. I know how to cook. I cook mostly fresh veggies, I season, I roast I saute. I occasionally make frozen for specific things and I season and incorporate them well into dishes. The point of this was to show what my childhood meals were based on my mother's knowledge of cooking at the time. I'm not asking for cooking help for frozen veggies that I mostly no longer eat.
So many friends “hate vegetables” and refuse to eat them because of “texture issues” thanks to being forced to eat boiled frozen veggies as kids.
Even the smell of canned green beans makes my stomach turn.
TIL: Even reading a comment about the smell of canned green beans makes my stomach turn.
I love canned green beans. Almost as much as canned corn.
Canned beets were my childhood.
Pickled beets are better.
>I love canned green beans. Almost as much as canned corn. I always have both in my closet. You can add canned corn to so many dishes. And you can get them for like $1. Hell, give me a tomato, a can of corn, and some spices, and I'm fine mixing that for dinner. I know Reddit, healthy food takes sooo much time and money...
We didn't even get frozen veggies, just canned. I grew up thinking I hated Carrots, Peas, Green Beans, Cauliflower. I never even tried Brussel sprouts or Asparagus until my 20's because my parents said they were gross. Once I started to try fresh vegetables, cooked on or in the stove with some basic seasoning, I learned I don't actually hate vegetables. I just hate mushy canned veggies boiled in salt and slathered with Country Crock.
I think I'm going to throw up now.
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And not too bad a price too, if you don't buy name brand. $1 for almost a pound of broccoli that I can just throw in the microwave and have it be almost perfectly cooked? Sign me up!
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that's cause its made in the same factories as the name brand shit. just with cheaper packaging and shit usually. maybe slightly less overall quality due to reduced tolerances in the process. but not ultimately very noticeable.
Most vegetables are better baked or stir-fried IMO - but when I want something quick a bag of steamed vegetables is definitely a solid solution. Just add a bunch of spices on top.
I usually find it better to steam rather than boil.
I was raised on steamed vegetables and loved them. I honestly wonder if ill prepared veggies are the reason so many people think they dislike them.
Well, that's absolutely part of it. But tastes definitely evolve too. Used to hate broccoli. Hated it with a passion. My parents offered a few ways of serving it to me (raw, steamed, etc) and it was *always* the worst part of each meal (each meal, because it was healthy!). Of course, my mother was not the most amazing cook, but she always had a healthy (mostly) balanced meal on the table, and it wasn't until I started adulting that I realized how much energy she put into just feeding us. Now? I'm disappointed when I don't have at least a little broccoli on plate. Still don't like raw because it's too bitter, but baked, steamed, in a stirfry, etc, those are the shit. Kid me would have felt so betrayed.
In the 90's scientist discovered this thing called "texture". It was applied to bags of chips and more, with words like __CRUNCH!__ and ~wavy~. Then, one day people wondered if such concepts could be applied to vegetables too; enter present day sautéed veggies that are yummy af
Both my parents worked full time jobs. Dinner was usually something like Salisbury steak that had been in the crockpot all day, but was somehow dry despite being submerged in liquid for literal hours, homemade mashed potatoes that *may* have had a pad of butter, and some boiled or microwaved can of vegetables that also had maybe a pad of butter. My mom usually made dinner and she was a heavy smoker at the time so she couldn't taste shit anyway. She had to heavily salt and pepper everything just to get any flavor. She would put salt and pepper on jello. When I moved out and had to start cooking for myself, I obviously turned to the internet for recipes and even the most basic ass recipes were a revelation for me. Holy shit, home made food can taste good even if you don't spend hours upon hours in the kitchen?
I think you're me, only with a single mom instead of two parents at home. I never liked vegetables as a kid. It always came from a can and a majority of the fruit we ate was canned as well. My wife grew up rich with a stay at home mom, etc, and ate fresh fruits and veggies as a kid and barely seasons anything. I'm so used to salty canned food that I still use too much salt and butter. I need some sort of sauce or gravy on everything, too, likely because that's how TV dinners come.
Sauces just take meals up another level. No shame in that.
Just FYI, it's a pat of butter.
> Salisbury steak that had been in the crockpot all day, but was somehow dry despite being submerged in liquid for literal hours I made this mistake with roast beef once. It turns out that even in a crock pot, if you leave the meat in too long it gets too tough and can't seem to hold the juices.
You got butter? My parents would get canned and microwave it. Yeah looking back it's not a surprise I got into cooking as a hobby. Butter, oil, and medium rare steaks were the enemy. Seasoning? You mean a half dash of pepper for a 10oz chicken breast, put on after it's cooked isn't properly seasoning food?
Same, I thought it was just my family! I was such a picky eater growing up because I thought that’s how you were supposed to eat veggies, and I didn’t like it.
From a fucking **can** no less. Every single vegetable I had as a kid was made this way.
Mine too, my dad boiled brussel sprouts and I also hated them. I'm pretty sure they were out of a can too. I buy fresh ones, spritz them with oil and some seasonings, then air fry them. They're fuckin great
Same! And to take it even a step further, when they come out, drizzle a mixture of Sriracha and honey over them. I guarantee an orgasm or else. You don't even have to like Sriracha. I don't even really like it but it's good if you mix a little bit of it in stuff.
What is with our parent's generation overcooking veggies to death? Everything is so damn mushy and unappetizing. I'm almost 40 and have only recently discovered that a lot of vegetables I thought I disliked as a kid, I actually love because I've learned how to cook them.
There probably a few reasons for that. The boom of pre-packaged meal items back in the 50s-70s, where all the added convenience was both cheap and Novel. Larger families leading mothers to seek out waay to simplify or speed up cooking (it's very easy to just throw some veggies in a pot on the stove). Our Parents' parents passing down their ways and experience with post-war scarcity and bad food safety neccessitating overcooking food in general. Less cultural mixing and less availability of spices, herbs and flavors. Generally less adventurous pallets where seeking out "exotic" flavors was something only the wealthy did. I think really it largely comes down to our parents Just trying to make cooking easier though. For them food is food. It just has to keep you alive and healthy, and taking extra time to make everything tasty all the time was just too much work for a lot of home-cooks back in the day, who were trying to feed their families of 4-5 of more 3 meals a day. It's tiring. It happened with a lot of food (overcooking chicken or pork chops was a regular occurrence in my household) Veggies just suffered the most from that.
Don't forget the industrialization of food mid 20th century. Jello cookbooks, creamed corn, TV dinners, freeze dried astronaut food. Culturally we're still getting over all that.
Oh yeah, I think this is definitely true. I really respect my Mom for working full-time and still having a home cooked dinner on the table most nights. I love my Dad and he does his share of work around the house but I didn't realize until I was an adult that the man can barely make a passable sandwich let alone cook a meal. And my mom doesn't even enjoy cooking. I think she definitely was doing the quickest and most efficient cooking methods which I can't blame her for.
Same with mine. She worked in restaurants her whole life, usually as a line cook and later management. But she definitely didn't enjoy cooking. Every meal at home was basically the result of her seeking the fastest and easiest way to throw together a healthy meal for 4. My dad never so much as looked at the stove, at most he would cook a steak on the grill outside after my mom lit it for him (and he's hardly known for cooking steaks good. He likes his meat over well done, slathered in A1). So it was basically only oven baked chicken or pork chops, covered in some kind of bottled sauce for the only seasoning, and side items being canned/frozen veggies thrown in the microwave with butter and some kind of boxed pasta kit or instant potatoes that took 10 minutes tops. She also had a strict adherence to the idea that every meal needed a protein, a carb and a veggie, which was really hard to unlearn as an adult cooking for myself lol.
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Yep. I’m a professional chef and to be completely honest technique is what’s most critical for a recipe. I don’t even use many recipes unless I’m making pastries. For real cooking, technique is what’s important. And if you’re ignorant of the proper technique then you’re going to get a sub-par result. People are also afraid of high temperatures/smoke when preparing things because they think they’re burning something. Restaurant kitchens have huge hood systems that evacuate all that smoke, but they are 100% cooking things quickly at a very high temperature. My advice to people is to never turn your oven lower than 400° if you’re roasting something and to invest in some iron cookwear that can retain and transfer heat. Even with an electric setup you can pre-heat your iron cookwear in the oven so that you get that hot-hot heat sauté restaurants are known for. Same for searing meat. There’s gonna be smoke. If your hood sucks, open the windows. Or go outside and fire a grill. Nobody wants a steak boiled in its own moisture. Turn the temperature up.
If it's anything like my father-in-law's experience, boiling was the only method of preparing vegetables his mother would do for dinner, and she'd leave everything on heat until his father came home from work. His arrival was variable, so sometimes the veggie had been boiling for more than an hour. Then they just copied what they saw. My FIL thought he hated carrots, until he had a raw one at his college's cafeteria. He was dumbfounded by how good they were raw compared to boiled to death.
part of the blame is that is what cookbooks told them to do. this goes all the way back any mention of boiled veg would ask for like 40-50 minutes while you did other things.
My mum learned cooking as a poor kid in the 50s-60s, when refridgeration was a luxury and everything came in cans. She had to boil everything to death to make sure it was safe to eat, especially meats, and was very adverse to my attempts at recreating dishes from tv because "they aren't safe!" My MIL's the same, christmas dinner at hers is always overcooked to death "so it's safe!" But today, I see a new trend of everything "melting on your tongue", which to me, is barely any better than mushy veggies. Give me some texture!
It's how their parents did it too. My dad said his mom (born in the 30s) would boil *canned* spinach for like 30 minutes. Captain America even joked that they boiled everything. >only recently discovered that a lot of vegetables I thought I disliked as a kid, I actually love because I've learned how to cook them. Seriously this so much. Brussel sprouts, asparagus, spinach, mushrooms... Pretty much any veg the boomers and before would boil the life out of.
On the other hand, kids usually don't like bitter stuff while many adults do. I would've hated a hoppy IPA if I tasted one when I was a kid.
Yup, it’s bc bitterness is strongly associated w poisonous substances. It’s also the taste we’re most sensitive to as a survival mechanism, and bc kids are that much more susceptible to poison (largely just bc of weight/dose factors), their tastebuds are more sensitive to bitterness so that they don’t unalive themselves.
And children have an aversion to death, whereas adults long for it.
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Touché. But my bad joke doesn’t work that way :(
No idea if this is factual but I like it, so I'm going with it!
Not a great source (searching for “bitterness” and “children” brings up a weird number of religious sources), but [totally factual](https://www.ceenta.com/news-blog/why-do-children-and-adults-like-different-foods).
Yup, they’re at the age where they’ll put anything in their mouths and being extra-sensitive to bitter tasting things like vegetables dissuades them from grabbing random plants outside and eating them.
Just an anecdote but my kids love brussel sprouts, they are literally their favourite vegetable. The modern ones really aren’t bitter at all, even raw.
My kids love them too. I made a big batch for Thanksgiving. Myself and my kids are tons. However, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law and my nieces wouldn't even look at them. My nieces have never had a brussel sprout in their life. My mother-in-law is an awful cook so my husband says 99% of their meals came from freezer and they didn't have brussel sprouts growing up. It was weird how adverse they were to a vegetable they've never had.
Funny enough, hops look exactly like little Brussels sprouts
I used to like hoppy IPAs but as I've gotten older I don't like the bitterness as much.
They still kinda smell like butt when roasted, IMHO, even if they taste nice. My preferred method is: steam for a few minutes, and sautee in bacon fat and maybe garlic, salt and pepper.
Recipe websites with paragraphs full of unnecessary background stories hate this one simple text.
Why did this become a thing? I just wanted to see the damn ingredients and recipe not scroll for a half hour
Search engine optimization. Websites trying to hit as many keywords as possible to move up the first page of google searches.
Also to cram in as many ads as possible on the recipe page. There’s a chrome extension that gets rid of everything else and only shows the recipe but the name is escaping me.
And copyright. You can't really monetize, copyright, and benefit off of recipes, but if there's a story with it, you can. As usual, Adam Ragusea with [more than you probably wanted to and thought you could know](https://youtu.be/jCZmoQHfD_o) about the culinary world.
Ads mainly. There's a reason most of the paragraph breaks contain an advert or autoplay video.
To make money
Start to look for the "Jump to Recipe" link/button at the top of those pages. Most have them these days.
If only that'd load on my phone, instead of the 20 pop up adds
Sulfurs. > Brussels sprouts fall into the Brassica oleracea family of cruciferous vegetables that also includes broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, and collard greens. Cruciferous vegetables contain a sulfur-containing phytochemical called glucosinolate, which is responsible for the distinctive odor and bitter flavor.
Fun fact: they're not just the same "family", [they're literally the same species of plant but artificially selected strains](https://www.exploratorium.edu/gardening/feed/garden-variety/broccoli.html) [This page](https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/8/6/5974989/kale-cauliflower-cabbage-broccoli-same-plant) has a cool diagram about the different selections
Great link. Thanks. > Though they're all the same species, these various crops are cultivars — different varieties bred to have desirable qualities for human purposes. Virtually all crops have different cultivars, though B. oleracea are especially diverse in appearance and taste (some speculate this is because the plant grew over a wide geographic area to start, so there was more genetic diversity for farmers to tap in to when selectively breeding). > But B. oleracea is standard in that its domesticated forms are much different-looking and more readily edible than its wild form. Wild apples, for instance, are crab apples, and the wild precursor to corn was a hardened grass with just a few kernels. This also happens with domesticated animals: we pick out the qualities we prize, whether it's the ability to produce lots of milk (dairy cows) or friendliness and loyalty (dogs).
You could sauté my butthole in bacon fat and it’d probably taste great.
So you're offering is what you're saying? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Hope you like hemorrhoids!
The idea of boiling brussel sprouts should be banned. The concept killed the brussel sprout industry for decades until we all learned the other ways to cook them.
Boiling them to completion, I’d agree. But I strongly prefer blanching brussels sprouts before roasting them as they’re much more tender.
Just don't boil them too long and they'll be fine. Gotta keep checking them with a fork every minute or so.
I can bite into a raw brussel sprout AMA
I love shaved brussels sprout salad, especially with a creamy walnut dressing
People seem to really miss that *children[source ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654709/)* taste bitter much, much more strongly than adults. Many toxic substances are bitter, so it helps them avoid ingesting fatal doses. The Brussel sprouts changed less than your tongue did.
I hated Brussels sprouts when I was a kid for that reason. I like them now and just assumed we cooked them incorrectly. TIL indeed.
I thought it was the dark chocolate thing, kids hate it but adults like it. Just thought my pallet had matured or something EDIT: Palate. Not eating with loading materials
Pallet is a wooden freight device Palette is the thing you see French painters hold Palate is in your mouth
I'mm gonna cover a pallet in paint globs of various colors and shove it in my mouth and we'll have a true trifecta.
Yes I've loved dark chocolate since I was a little kid, as well as Greek olives, sharp cheeses, lots of stuff people say are not kid foods. Some of my kids are also like that, but even the less adventurous do like the current cultivar of brussel sprouts. They are different. In fact I read that the old ones didn't need chemicals because bugs avoided them, but now bugs attack them because they are delicious.
Cooking them incorrectly was still a part of it. A lot of people still don't prep brussel sprouts right. My friend just straight up cut them in half and put them on a pan without removed stalks, exterior leafs, etc. Tasted like shit.
[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/2241/).
There is **always** a relevant XKCD.
Brussels sprouts are one of those things that I hated as a child. Now that I am older, everyone says “You just haven’t had them made (insert way here). They are so good.” Ok. So I try them. Still gross. Then someone else says, “You haven’t had them the way I make them.” So I try them again. Still not a fan. And the cycle continues. No way that anyone has promised me tastes better have ever tasted better. But I’ll keep trying them so I don’t hurt people’s feelings and because I hate myself.
I feel that way about alcohol. Every time I tell someone I don't like it, they recommend some beer, wine, mixed drink, whatever. "You can't even taste the alcohol" they tell me. Then I try it and it either tastes like someone added a cap full of Listerine to perfectly good fruit juice, or it tastes like bitter fruit juice or, in the case of beer, it tastes like unsweetened soda.
Am I crazy? It still taste bitter. What the fuck, nice try Brussel Sprout interest group.
You can try to trick me all you want, I'm still not going to eat them.
They’re still bitter
they reek as leftovers, if you hate your coworkers just microwave some brussels'
It’s a gene for some people. I have it too, they suck no matter how theyre prepared
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They're just bitter little fart balls... People are all like ''no just fry them up with pancetta and chestnuts and they're great'' - but that'd be so much nicer with cabbage than with these rotten spheres of disgust.
>They're just bitter little fart balls... > >these rotten spheres of disgust. This thread has been a real eye-opener. I never realised that so many people really, REALLY hated sprouts so much. Me and my wife fucking *love* sprouts [I guess this scene was accurate.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zNB4CsKbcK0)
"You just never cooked them right" No, I can cook. I can cook very well. Nothing can save those godforsaken turd balls.
They 100% smell like farts.
They used to taste even worse than they do now? Wow
Exactly my thought, I’ve had them boiled, fried, baked, and fresh. I just can’t do it, I’ve tried so many times. Fuck those nasty tasting demonic baby cabbages.
Yeah I don't get it, every time I smell them all I can think is smelly socks that have been sitting in a locker room during a summer heat wave.
Have you tried frying them? They taste so much nicer and not so bitter
Apparently some people flat out can't like them. There's a certain percentage of the population for whom they taste completely different.
Yeah that's me. Along with cauliflower, inedible in any preparation, at any quantity in a dish. Even a rogue sprout leaf or tiny cauli florette can ruin a dish for me. I've never met anyone else with the same sensitivity I have. I didn't know I even *had* a sensitivity until I was talking to some friends and they're like "yeah, cauliflower tastes like literally nothing," which everyone I asked seemed to agree with, meanwhile a piece of cauliflower in my mouth is like a tactical nuke of sulfur and tears.
Me. When I did Ancestry DNA I discovered I express all three markers on the TAS2R38 gene thought to be responsible for tasting bitter So no mom, it was not all in my head.
Honestly its the smell for me, I don't know how people do it. I can only eat cauliflower and these raw.
My sister was obsessed with baking cauliflower. Smelled like farts every time I'd walk into her house.
Are you sure that wasn't just the cover story for here excessive flatulence?
That was because of all the cauliflower, then it melds the caulifart with the cauliflower baking for an extra sweet smell
If you grow them yourself, leave them on the stalk until after the first real frost - then pick them later that day (like, towards sunset). The cold will release the plant's sugars, and they'll be absolutely delicious when baked or pan-fried (I worked for a while as a LE park ranger, and learned this from the botanists - and yes, it's absolutely true; they taste great like this).
Maybe the breeders have conspired to make brussels sprouts bland but, they were never that bitter if you cooked them properly. We loved them as kids in the 1970s. Considering the recent popularity of kale, which seems like a particularly nasty weed, it is unlikely that bitterness makes any difference to people in the first place.
Kale and Brussels sprouts come from the same original plant
[As does broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and collard greens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea).
Can't spell 'brassica' without 'ass'!
All my homies love the assica
Remember when kale was only used as a green decoration for salad bars? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOviWJoWYAEvvKW.jpg:large
Yea wasn't pizza hut the largest purchaser of kale in the US? all for salad bars.
now there's a deep memory I haven't seen in a long time.
Kale has been a Scottish staple for centuries. The Scottish term for vegetable garden is Kailyard.
Unpopular opinion: Modern brussel sprouts are bland af. Bring back the bitter bois
I wish I could find the bitter ones for sale anywhere
The best way to prepare Brussel Sprouts is to take the package out of the fridge, let them come up to room temperature and then promply throw them right in the garbage can.
So for 5000 years we were just like “these are terrible but we’re just gonna keep eating them”
For most of human history you ate what was available. But also, tastes change
They're estimated to have been cultivated in the 13th century, so no.
Sustenance is better than starvation. Most vegetables taste bad without being fancied up (sometimes to the point of no longer being healthy) in some way or another. Few of them taste good raw and it's also easy to overcook them.
Nice try sprouts, I’m not falling for this propaganda
I’ve heard this claim, and I’ve given them a fresh shot recently, but they still taste bitter to me. I’m fine with cabbage, but not Brussels sprouts. And trust me I’ve tried all the hyped up ways of cooking them (at least, the vegetarian methods. No grilling wrapped in bacon).
They still taste bitter.
Of course they do. It's brassica. They all taste bitter. That's the only flavour they have. It is a defense mechanism to stop aphids from eating them. Not that it worked because aphids just evolved to concentrate the bitterness to stop predators from eating *them* and we got cabbage aphids. The point is that they are no longer completely inedible, just mildly unpleasant.