How Anthony Bourdain Took Brussels Sprouts From Zero To Hero

Brussels sprouts' earthy bitterness isn't for everyone, and even some of these vegetables' proudest defenders have to admit that they need a lot of help to achieve their full flavor potential. In many recipes, this means bacon, but the best results won't be obtained by simply adding some at the end.

The culinary icon Anthony Bourdain preferred cooking Brussels sprouts in rendered fat from diced slab bacon. Slab bacon is the best of all the bacon varieties for this purpose, because the thick dicing you can get from an uncut sheet of bacon gives deliciously meaty bites. But the real hero is the rendered fat, directly infusing the vegetables with flavor.

Bourdain's Brussels sprouts begin with cooking diced bacon in a large pan with a bit of water to prevent burning, until the fat has rendered into grease. The cooked bacon is set aside for later, and most of the grease is poured off, reserving about 3 tablespoons for pan-frying the sprouts until crisp. At this point, the dish begins to take form and acquire its real deliciousness, with the cooked bacon returning at the end in a supporting role — not as the star.

If you couldn't tell from how bacony his Brussels sprouts are, Bourdain loved eating pork. He enjoyed the rich depth of flavor possible with this protein so much that Bourdain's self-declared best sandwich in America contained three different kinds of pork, including bacon. In his Brussels, though, the smoky bacon fat counters the vegetables' natural bitterness and helps them brown better in the pan, similar to roasted Brussels sprouts.

The flavor combination is so obvious that Bourdain is far from the only notable chef to combine pork fat and Brussels sprouts. Multi-Michelin star chef Gordon Ramsay upgrades Brussels sprouts with two key ingredients, one of which is pancetta. Pancetta is like the fine dining version of bacon, unsmoked and tender enough to melt into dishes during cooking. And Ramsay uses it similarly in his recipe to Bourdain and slab bacon in his. 

Ramsay cooks the pancetta until crispy and rendered, with the grease being used to cook blanched Brussels along with his second key ingredient, chestnuts, for a balancing kiss of sweetness. So whether your meal is more Ramsay-level fine dining or Bourdain's cool-and-casual, rendered bacon fat is a divine way to dress up this side dish.