Yummy Lummy Sous Vide Brassica Vegetables
Regular readers will know I’m partial to Brassica vegetables, especially Brussels sprouts and broccolini.
Fellow Canberra food blogger, Michele Walton, sent me an abstract from a paper extolling the virtues of cooking Brassica vegetables by sous vide.
Michele is a noted local nutritionist and food and travel blogger whose special area of expertise and knowledge being Indian cuisine. I highly recommend you check out Michele’s blogs.
Because I only had the abstract and didn’t have access to the full paper, I had to have a guess at the temperature and duration of cooking. From the abstract, it seems the basis for the conclusion of the paper is that sous vide temperatures are unlikely to destroy heat-labile nutrients including some vitamins.
This is a Yummy Lummy original recipe.
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I bought all the ingredients from Coles. I cooked with an Anova Culinary precision cooker. No, Yummy Lummy is not sponsored by anyone.
Recipe
- Broccolini
- Brussels sprouts
- Worcestershire sauce
- Sesame oil
- Iodised table salt
- Olive oil
- Minced/ground beef
- Sliced mushrooms
- Red wine
- Chilli flakes
- Iodised salt flakes
- Freshly cracked black pepper
- Grated Coon® Colby cheese
- Butter
- Cream
- Chopped parsley
- Sliced Spring onion
- Blue cheese
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Cut the stem and auxiliary bud off each Brussel sprout and then slice in half sagittally.
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Put the broccolini and sliced Brussels sprouts into a large ziplock bag.
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To the bag add a tablespoon of iodised table salt, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, about dozen shakes of sesame oil and a good squeeze of olive oil (assuming you're using a plastic bottle).
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Using the displacement method to remove the excess air from the bag, slowly and carefully place the partially sealed bag into the water bath so the air is expelled and as the water approaches the seal, complete the seal of the bag.
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Turn on the precision cooker (I use an Anova Culinary Precision Cooker which has an app I can use and connect the cooker and my smartphone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) and set the temperature to 85 °C/185 °F and cook for a duration of one hour.
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When the time is finished, turn off the precision cooker and remove the bag of Brassica vegetables from the water bath.
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Take enough Brussels sprouts and broccolini from the bag for dinner and put the rest into a container and refrigerate for leftover meals.
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On a roasting tray, use a cook's torch to brown the vegetables.
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Heat up a nonstick frying pan to a high heat.
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Add the mince and start to stir.
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When the meat is mostly brown, add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms are soft and absorbing the meat juices.
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Add the red wine and stir through the meat and mushrooms. Cook until the wine has reduced.
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Add in the chilli flakes, iodised salt flakes, and freshly cracked black pepper, and stir through.
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Drop in the butter and stir it through until it is melted and then pour in some cream.
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Toss in the chopped parsley and sliced spring onion and stir through.
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Turn off the heat and add the grated Coon® Colby cheese until it's melted.
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Add the minced beef to the plate and top with some blue cheese.
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Garnish the minced beef with some chopped parsley.
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Serve the minced beef with some of the sous vide Brassica vegetables.
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Shoot a photograph. I use my Nikon DSLR and a Tamron 90 mm macro lens.
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Eat the meal while watching something entertaining on TV.
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Wash the dishes scrubbing all the fat off.
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Write the recipe.
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Write the blog post.
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Hope that readers will share this post on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.
Disclaimer
I have no culinary training nor qualifications.
This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner.
The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste.
I deliberately do not calculate energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.
Photographs
This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one and scroll through the rest of the images.
Questions and answers
How did they taste? What was the mouthfeel like?
The broccolini was a little wilted but when I bit into it it was crunchy. Using a cook’s torch to char the outside especially the florets made a big difference to the taste. I really liked it. The Brussels sprouts remained firm and had crunch. Both the Brussels sprouts and broccolini absorbed the flavours of the sesame oil and the Worcestershire sauce. I like it. I’ll do this again.
Do Brassica vegetables make you fart?
Yes indeed. The gas producing coliform bacteria in my bowels ferment the glucose and other sugars and one of the products at the end of the chemical reaction is methane and other volatile organic gases.
Are Brussels sprouts and broccolini closely “related”?
Brussels sprout
Species Brassica oleracea
Cultivar group Gemmifera Group
Broccolini
Species: B. oleracea
Cultivar Group
Italica Group × Alboglabra Group
Was minced/ground beef the best meat to serve the Brassica vegetables with?
Not really but I didn’t want a heavy meal and I wanted to show off the Brussels sprouts and broccolini.
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Final thoughts
Do you like Brassica vegetables?
How do you like to cook and eat Brussels sprouts?
What do you think I should eat the leftover vegetables with?
Wow
Thank you
We have a sous vide but have never used it with vegetables. I’ll definitely give them a try.
Thanks, Karen. I reckon it’s worth it. While the Brassica vegetables were nice, what I like more is cooking some potato, or sweet potato, or pumpkin and make a nice mash. The best thing is there is no added water so you can make a nice firm mash 😃
I think veggies (the few I actually eat) are the best thing I’ve found, cooking-wise, in the sous vide. They seem to shine with the flavor absorption.
I was pleasantly surprised at just how nice these vegetables tasted.
Wow I never realized you could put plastic bags in a pressure cooker! Learnt something new there!
Sorry Rose, no, I cooked these in a sous vide water bath.
Wow Gary! I’m so pleased it turned out so well!! It sounds so delicious too!
Thanks Michele. I’ll happily do it again 😃
Wow, this looks great. I’ve had limited success with sous vide vegetables before (ie we tried carrots once and they were boring), so I’m inspired to see sous vide veggies in action.
I did celeriac once. It was okay. Pumpkin is awesome. It makes a great mash.
Interesting to know that cooking them sous vide retains nutrition. I really must play with one of those machines.
I hope you do Lorraine. There are a few brands out there and if you don’t want to buy the water bath you can use a large pot.
I’m keen on doing 63 °C eggs soon 😃
I was following along nicely with everything and thinking of the possibilities in a culinary way when I got to the faq section and read the confirmation that indeed the recipe could produce volatile organic gasses and at that point, I was all in. I thought how I could come to work the next day and share the health benefits with my co-workers. I thought of how to spread the good word during the scheduled audio-visual teleconference. You came through again my friend and life is good. Many thanks.
Always happy to help Daniel. I want to make food fun and farty for everyone, especially the following day for coworkers so they can all enjoy the benefits of vegetables.
If only parents taught their children about the farting fun, there would be no children rejecting vegetables at dinner time.
I think you are absolutely right. It starts at home by pulling dad’s finger and then it evolves into school activities that prepare young people to work together and share confined elevators in a fun way.
Without the fun of farting in enclosed spaces at work, what point is there in arriving to work each Monday after a weekend of beans, cabbage and lashings of gravy?
Persactly! We are of the same mind, Gary. I’m not sure I could go to work if it weren’t for all that elevator fun and stairwells too. What excellent acoustics can be found in the stairwell for those blustery ballads bursting with broccoli notes. The wind instrument is the easiest to learn too. All you have to do is pucker up and blow.
Think of the scientific endeavour too. With a close friend you can find out if the sound of a fart travels more quickly from the top of the stairwell or from the bottom. For all I know it’s the same. I know the theoretical physicists will have an answer but why bother with theory when you can actually conduct the experiment.
I agree totally. Research and development for engineering solutions is my daily effort. While it’s great to pay millions of dollars to very smart people to preface every paragraph with Why or I wonder if, I’m more of a guy that light the fuse and studies the high-speed film to say, we need more accelerant. I think I’ll run up the stairs and see if I can record a Doppler effect. I’m sure there will be lots of uses for that discovery.
And it’s a great way to teach young minds how to think and solve problems.
That’s really what’s missing here. Intuitive and critical thinking translated into successful action or farting as it were.
I now have more reason for eating onions, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I’m doing it for science and engineering.
But really, we’re doing it for humanity.
Ultimately the goal is to bring us to a more divine existence. I feel it would bring us close to nature by replicating the sound of braying donkeys which never fails to induce a flow of healthy hormones.
I could contemplate the sights and sounds of braying donkeys for a long time. It would help me concentrate on developing new Brassica creations.
Every time I think of my braying donkey impersonation, I crack myself up. Brassica is the secret to a blistering good outcome.
The good thing is I still have leftovers and after last night’s meal which featured leftover broccolini and Brussels sprouts, I can attest that they remain an excellent substrate for the conversion of natural sugars and carbohydrates to gases.
Another successful test and evaluation. Let the trumpets blare.
There are days when I think it’s more tuba or trombone in tone 😂
Ha haa haaaa! Those tubastic rhythms and trombolisms are the stuff of symphonic delight.
I prefer tubastic rather than the embarrassment of a piccolo note.
Oh yes, we re in total agreement. Pweeeeps are no way to express a manly persona.
And to be fair and equitable, if a woman wishes to express herself with a tubastic fart, I would never object. It suggests to me a good meal has been enjoyed by a healthy alimentary canal.
Its very true and many women don’t realize that when her man rips a seam in the universe, he is showing he accepts her without reservation. If she truly loves him she’ll answer his call to glory. Otherwise, it could be awkward.
I don’t understand why modern anthropologists have not written more about this in popular media. Maybe it is up to you and I.
True, my friend. The sound of amorous frogs at pond’s edge keeps the frogs sated with delight and that same tubombastic horn brings giggles and frowns. We know which lives a better life.
We should endeavor to enlighten the world one blog, one reader at a time. It could make a difference.
We should, it’s our new life mission.
I’m in! 😁
Let’s do this!
I’ll post my first tuba tastic rant this weekend to get it going on this end.
I’m out and about this weekend, I will have to find suitable food to ensure a tubastic reply.
You can do it! As long as you add beer and beans, you’re good. 😆
I can’t drink, but beans I can do!
No problem. I actually drink rarely but there are some good carbonated catylists out there that will ensure a good afterburner exhaust plume.
If you see a big blue flame from across the big pond, you know I’m having some fun with a match.
Waaaa haaaaa haaaaaaa!
Love the brassicas, broccoli in particular. This recipe seems a brilliant use of them. Sprouts are good shredded and fried in butter with bacon. With your left over veggies, why not turn them into a low-carb version of cauliflower cheese (I think you did one a few weeks ago–and thanks for the curry powder tip. I used it in cauliflower cheese soup).
The Brassica cheese is a great idea Emma. This is what I did with some of the leftovers last night
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I was just thinking you were just having vegetables for dinner Gary then I saw the mince…should have known…ha ha. Vegetables look great.
I was tempted Sue to do vegetables only, but I had some raw mince left in the refrigerator and I needed to use it.
And here I was thinking sous vide was only for proteins (ie meat sources), so thank you Gary for opening my eyes to veggies done this way!
These vegetables were really tasty and they remained crunchy too.
It was really Michele inspired too Kirsty
The brussel sprouts and brocollini do shine through. Interesting combo with the blue cheese. I’m not a huge fan of brussel sprouts and prefer green leafy vegetables. Leftover veggies and cheese sounds good 😃
Cooking the Brussels sprouts this way did keep them crunchy and flavours in the bag enhanced the flavour.
It won’t be how I cook them on a school night though 😃
Brussels sprouts are good fried with bacon.
I love brassica veggies. Hubby recently made brussels sprouts by first lightly boiling them, then frying them with an anchovy and capers butter. Yum!
Yum. That sounds amazing.