Cranberry Pecan Roasted Brussels Sprouts Recipe

I was sitting in a roadside diner with my dad, barely four years old. He was eating a plate filled with meat and boiled Brussels sprouts and asked me if I wanted to taste them.

I did, and I thought they were gross.

He told me they’re his favourite vegetable. I thought his tastebuds were very weird, everybody knew the best vegetables were frosting carrots.

Dad committed suicide some three years later, so I’m very inclined to think my four-year-old self was on to something - his tastebuds were weird, indeed.

In the almost 20 years between his death and now I have been torn a lot between being angry at him and feeling guilty for being angry at him.

Doing everything he loved, trying to be his mini-me - or rebelling against him with every single fibre of my being.

Now that I have kids of my own with a dad of their own, I’m slowly settling into this belief: It is OK to be angry and to keep him out of my life. It’s also OK to be sad about it. 

And it’s also OK to love him for the dad he often tried so hard to be - and to make Brussels sprouts, remembering how much he enjoyed them.

Here they’re roasted with cranberries and pecans for the ultimate soul-warming side dish.

I know sprouts are a holiday-only obligation to many, but I’ve come to love them so, so much. I eat them from the first frost until their season ends in early March.

They taste amazing in dishes such as risotto, but also in a Chicken, Potato and Brussels Sprouts Sheet Pan Dinner.

I don’t know if they’ll ever come close to boiled-to-infinity roadside diner sprouts (spoiler alert: they somehow do), but they get slightly crispy on the outside and all soft and mellow on the inside. The toasted pecans add a nice bout of flavour and texture, while the cranberries are like little flecks of tart surprises in there.

Definitely worth getting over your fear of sprouts it it should exist - I’m sure my four-year-old self would have deemed these almost as delicious as frosting carrots.