And to think all I do is slap butter on my sprouts! I'm such a cretin!
I haven't tried making a version of it yet, but I saw on tv a pancetta, Brussels sprouts, chestnuts recipe cooked in a saute pan. That also sounds good. That sprout/soy/lemon/butter recipe I created back in the '80's. All recipes call for sprouts to be cooked in salted water. So I thought to myself, what is soy sauce but salted water (of sorts)? I figured butter wouldn't hurt (when does it ever?), and it came out decent; then added the lemon juice for bite and it was perfect. It's now a recipe firmly ensconced in my repertoire. (I saw on a Triple D show one recipe for sprouts baked in the oven with chicken stock and lemon. The host, Guy, had never seen sprouts cooked with lemon before. I could only smile at the tv.) I cooked this recipe one Thanksgiving at the family get together, though prepping that volume of sprouts was time consuming; the kids were useful for that. But even they loved 'em. Like yourself, so many shortchange the little critters. But whatever you do, do not ever buy frozen ones -- they truly suck. With sprouts, it's fresh or not at all, and try to buy them hard like little rocks (give 'em a squeeze, there should be little to no 'give'). In the spring, you can sometimes find small marble sized sprouts, and they take no time to cook. But when you do find sprouts later in the season, try to pick ones all the same size as it helps in cooking consistency. With the liquid recipe, I do not cut them in half -- I like them whole, so if I have larger and smaller ones, I'll give the bigger ones a 5 to 10 minute head start, then add the rest. If at the end, some are cooked while others are still a little underdone (it happens), just remove the cooked ones until the others are finished, then add back the removed ones to coat and rewarm. Getting different sized sprouts all done at the same time is the trick, and takes only a little effort.
Needless to say, I love sprouts. Oh, and I always use unsalted butter in all my recipes. For health reasons, I like to control the salt, plus unsalted butter is what's used in desserts. So unsalted butter is one stop shopping.
I do hope some of you try this and let me know how they went over. I always like to know how my creations taste to other people as I have no guinea pigs around. But everyone I've ever made this for liked it, so I know this creation of mine is a solid recipe.
