Brussels sprouts

Brussels sprouts got a bad reputation from decades of boiling, and if you’ve ever choked down a mushy, overcooked sprout, you know it was completely deserved. The good news is that fall and winter Brussels sprouts — picked after the first frost, when the sugars have had time to develop — are a genuinely different vegetable than the ones that traumatized a generation of home cooks.

In my kitchen I roast them until the outer leaves go crispy and slightly charred, hit them with balsamic, shave them raw into a salad with enough acid and texture to hold its own next to a steak, or take them somewhere unexpected with garam masala or toasted almonds and feta. That’s a different vegetable entirely.