Crispy Brussel Sprouts & Bacon! SO Easy & SO TASTY!

Hi, I'm Chef Ang, and welcome to my kitchen. On today's episode, we're going to be making one of my favorite vegetables, brussel sprouts. They're a go-to side on every steakhouse and trendy restaurant menu. They're easy to work with and super nutritious. With a little help from some bacon and some onions, even the pickiest vegetable eaters will be asking for more. We're going to take off just a little bit of the end on the bottom, and if any leaves fall off, that's okay. We're looking to pull off any leaves that are brown or discolored or yellow. And then from here, we're going to cut the brussel sprout directly in half. So once we're in half, we're going to put it inside our bowl, and we're going to keep repeating for the whole pile, taking off a little bit of that woody end, removing any leaves that are brown or discolored, and then just cutting them in half and just pushing everything to the side. Now that my brussel sprouts are all cut, I'm going to cut my onions, my garlic, my parsley, and my bacon. I'm just going to cut very thin strips of onions from the bottom to the top. They don't have to be very exact, because these onions are going to get super soft. Just making thin strips and going all the way down to the bottom, and then you can throw the root right out. So, I'm going to take these and I'm going to put these inside of a container. I love these little plastic containers to cook with, because they do a great job of holding your ingredients so you can assemble them on the stove. Good. So, now we're going to do the same for our garlic, except the garlic we're going to trim the ends off, get rid of those so they don't get mixed in. Now from here, I'm going to take my garlic, I'm going to put it flat on the cutting board and give it downward pressure to crack the garlic close. And now from here, we're just going to go through for a rough chop. So now from here, let's clean our parsley. I'm going to pull the leaves off, discarding the stem in my scrap bowl, and now giving these a rough chop all the way through. I'll keep pushing the pile together and keep chopping until we get the consistency that we're looking for. Maybe one more time, and that looks pretty good. I like to use bacon as an ingredient a lot, and how I like it stored is in the freezer. I'll pull it out of the freezer just a little bit before I need it, because when it's cold it's easier to work with. And now I'm just going to cut right through the plastic. You can see that this is already a piece missing from another dish that I did previously. And now from here, I'm just going to cut right through the plastic. I'll reserve this and save this. We'll get rid of the plastic, and now I have some semi-frozen bacon that's going to be really easy for me to cut through. So now I'm actually going to cut strips along this way, maybe about a half inch thick. And you can see because it's semi-frozen, it's very easy to work with. And now from here, we're just going to go long ways and cut pieces this way. So now that our ingredients are all prepped, let's dress our Brussels sprouts and get them into the oven, and then we'll make the bacon and the onions on top of the stove. So what we're going to do is drizzle our Brussels sprouts with some olive oil, maybe a couple tablespoons of olive oil. I want to make sure I move them around and get a nice, even coating on them. So now we're going to take some base seasoning and season the Brussels sprouts. If you don't know what base seasoning is, check out my episode 5, and it's just a blend of garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper, and I give the exact ratios in that video. So now I'm going to sprinkle the Brussels sprouts, making sure that I'm moving side to side, and I'll put a pretty generous coating on them. That's going to help these Brussels sprouts crisp on the outside and get nice flavor. I'm going to take my hands right in there and toss the Brussels sprouts so they're nice and coated with the olive oil and the base seasoning. That looks pretty good, so now let's get them on a baking sheet. I've lined my baking sheet with some parchment paper to help on cleanup, and so now I'm going to dump my Brussels sprouts on the sheet, and I'm going to spread them out and arrange them cut side up. When you do it cut side up, it seems to get them a little crispier. If there's any loose leaves, that's okay, those are going to get really brown and crisp, and they're going to add a really nice flavor to contrast the Brussels sprouts that'll be not so brown. So now I'll just keep arranging until I get all the cut sides up, and I'm just looking for any ones that are flipped over. So now I'm going to throw these in a 375 degree convection oven for about 20 to 30 minutes. If you don't have a convection setting, 400 is probably okay, but what you're looking for is brown, crispy, a little charred on the outside, anywhere between that 20 to 30 minute mark. That's going to make sure that they're cooked and crispy on the outside, but also cooked all the way through. So let's throw these in the oven, and then we're going to cook our bacon and onions. So now we're going to put our bacon inside of our pan while our pan's heating up. We're going to bring it up to like a medium heat. Bacon is okay like this to put it in a cold pan and just spread it out and just wait for it to heat up. And as it heats up, the bacon will start to sizzle. So now that this bacon is starting to sizzle in the pan and the pan is heating up, I'm just going to break up all the little chunks and try to get as much individual pieces going as possible and really spread them out to get nice, even coloring. So I think this is looking crispy enough, so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take out the bacon and I'm going to put it inside of this bowl here, and I'm going to try to reserve as much of the liquid as possible, and I'm going to use a slotted spoon. So I'm grabbing the bacon and grabbing as little of the liquid as possible. So now I have this bacon fat in the pan, and that looks like plenty fat to cook these onions in, so now I'm going to dump these onions in, and I'll work them around the pan and give them a nice coat with that bacon fat to make sure that they'll cook very nicely and evenly. And I'm just going to keep tossing them inside that pan, they're going to continue to soften. It doesn't look like I need to put any additional oil in here, but if you use less bacon or you're not using bacon at all, you can just pour some olive oil in there and that can be fine to soften and to caramelize these onions. So now most of these onions are starting to take on this little brown color on the outside, and that's a good sign they're getting close to finish. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my garlic and throw in my garlic into the pan, give that a quick mix around. I'm not going to cook this for very long because we don't want to burn the garlic, and it's just going to take about a minute just to cook it the tiniest little bit, and just take the garlic from raw to slightly cooked without burning it. And I'll keep mixing everything nicely so that garlic is nicely coated in the cooking fat. So now before any of this garlic starts to burn, I'm going to take a heavy splash of some white wine vinegar in the pan, and that's going to help finish softening up the onions. We're just going to move that around the pan, and you can see as soon as I threw it in the pan, it picked up all that browning on the bottom of the pan, the onions really turned translucent and got super brown, and now we're getting this nice uniform brown color in the pan, and the onions are super soft and clear. We're going to wait until that evaporates a little bit, but while that's evaporating, I'm going to season with a little salt and some fresh ground black pepper. I don't need much, that looks pretty good. What a nice color on these onions and garlic. So now we're going to toss these, make sure that the salt and pepper are evenly coated, we're going to shut the heat off, and now we're going to take our parsley and sprinkle it on top, and give that a good mix. Look how nice that looks. So now we're going to wait for our brussel sprouts to finish, and then we're going to toss this with the cooked brussel sprouts. We're going to pull this off the heat so it stops cooking. So to transfer the brussel sprouts over to the bowl, we can easily just pick up the parchment paper by the outside, make sure that all the brussel sprouts are in there, and we can just slide them right inside that bowl. Wonderful. Move this to the side. So now we've got our crispy brussel sprouts in there, we're going to take our bacon, we're going to toss that in there, and we're also going to take our softened onions with the garlic, and we'll throw those in there. Now with our spoon, we're going to give that a good toss, so everything is evenly mixed. So you've got the crispy brown leaves in there, you've got the bacon, the onions and the garlic, oh it smells so good. So before we serve this, we'll take this, we'll put this in a nicer bowl. You can just throw this right on the table like this with a serving spoon, and people can help themselves. Look how nice that looks. Let's give it a shot, let's see what it tastes like, so we're going to make sure that we get a little bit of everything, get some of those onions, get a couple pieces of bacon, get one of these brussel sprouts, mmm, mmm, that's so good, that's wonderful. So you can serve this with steak, fish, chicken, any protein, and this is a wonderful side. Thank you so much for watching, don't forget to subscribe to my channel, leave comments on this video, and let me know how your brussel sprouts come out. Thanks and see you next time.