Two Veggies Deserving of More Respect 🌞

[justaprogressive]

Last edited Thu Jul 3, 2025, 04:06 PM - Edit history (1)

Hominy with Cheddar, Chiles, and Sour Cream



SERVES 4

Two 30-ounce cans hominy, drained and rinsed
2/3 cup sour cream
1 to 2 tablespoons minced fresh chile peppers of your choice, or less to taste
6 ounces Cheddar cheese, grated
Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste


1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Spread one third of the hominy in the bottom of a small baking
dish. Spread half the sour cream, half the chiles, and half the cheese on
top. Season with salt and pepper. Repeat to form a second layer, and top
with the remaining hominy. Bake uncovered until the top is golden, about
30 minutes. Serve hot.

**********************************************************************************

Brussels Sprouts in Brown Butter



SERVES 4

1 pound Brussels sprouts, well washed and stems trimmed
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Fill a large bowl with
ice and water. Cook the sprouts in the boiling water until just tender,
about 4 minutes. When the sprouts are done, drain and plunge them into
the ice water; wait a few minutes, then drain them well and halve or quarter them.

2. In a large sauté pan, heat the butter over medium heat until foamy.
Add the sprouts, season lightly with salt and pepper, and toss to coat them
with the butter. Keep tossing until the butter begins to brown lightly and
the sprouts are heated through. Serve immediately.

Both recipes from "How to Cook Meat" by Chris Schlesinger

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/304725.How_to_Cook_Meat

[House of Roberts]

1. The hominy recipe sounds really good.

I'd go light on the chiles but that's all I'd do different.

[littlemissmartypants]

2. Bookmark, recipes. TY! ❤️

[Trueblue Texan]

3. Love both these veggies...

I am partial to grits in the morning —I make them with chopped zucchini, sweet corn, garlic chives and sometimes spinach to give me a little boost of veggies.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Ironic, given the title of the book. I've seen many recipes for BS sauteed and roasted; olive oil, butter, whatever.

Never seen the two-stage boil, then brown, before. Frankly, roasted/sauteed BS seems pretty foolproof. Do it the simplest way, or fancy it up, it's about the same.

And don't forget those little buggers can you give a case of gas like you've never had before.

[justaprogressive]

5. Since you asked:

Roasting is a popular way to cook this veggie, but cooking Brussels sprouts in water before
roasting them can help reduce their gassiness.

**I've got a couple of Chris's meat recipes on tap (already did his
signature Carribean hot sauce (Inner Beauty))

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Well, I sure could've used that info earlier ! I learned pretty late in life that even cabbage causes gas ...

... which I had never noticed. I guess because my favorite way to eat it was boiled, with lots of black pepper.

I never go to Reddit, but Google found quite a long discussion there on this topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/9vnee3/brussel_sprouts_any_ways_to_cook_that_lessen/

As a chemist, of course I wanted to know what the 'active ingredient' is:

Along with onions, dairy products and pulses, sprouts are pretty difficult to digest in the stomach and small intestine. This is because they contain a complex sugar called raffinose. Raffinose is broken down by an enzyme called alpha-galactosidase. Our digestive system doesn’t produce a huge amount of this enzyme and when we consume a lot of raffinose, in the form of those delicious balls of goodness, our body has to adapt.

So, although our bowel bacteria is perfectly capable of dealing with excess raffinose, there is a small price to pay in the form of hydrogen {sulfide}, carbon dioxide and methane emissions. In other words, pretty stinky farts.

And it’s not just Brussels that have this fart factor. Just like Brussels, kale, cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage – in fact all members of the brassica family of foods – contain high levels of raffinose and are essentially “fartinogenic”.

https://charlottehunternutrition.co.uk/sprout-sprout-let-it-all-out-why-brussels-sprouts-make-you-fart/

Alpha-galactosidase is the active ingredient in Beano. I can't report on its effectiveness.

Wikipedia has quite a lot to say on raffinose. I wish I'd looked it up earlier:

It is non-digestible in humans and other monogastric animals (pigs and poultry) who do not possess the α-GAL enzyme to break down RFOs. These oligosaccharides pass undigested through the stomach and small intestine. In the large intestine, they are fermented by bacteria that do possess the α-GAL enzyme and make short-chain fatty acids (SCFA)(acetic, propionic, butyric acids), as well as the flatulence commonly associated with eating beans and other vegetables. These SCFAs have been recently found to impart a number of health benefits.[citation needed] α-GAL is present in digestive aids such as the product Beano.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffinose

I had learned a long time ago that human digestive systems can break some polysaccharide bonds but not others, which is why different starches digest differently. The bonds that don't get broken get passed into the intestine as (at least) disaccharides, which feed the bacteria there, causing gas. I hadn't realized that there were common oligosaccharides -- such as raffinose -- that produced the same result.

[justaprogressive]

7. Thanks for sharing

this info. Raffinose is indeed the culprit nearly blew up from cauliflower
the other week!