Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Hustle 'n Brussels Foil-Pack Attack

Per Serving (½ of recipe): 5 Points+
182 calories, 2.75g fat, 513mg sodium, 35.5g carbs, 6.5g fiber, 5g sugars, 6g protein 


The recipe: "Hungry Girl 1-2-3", pages 160 - 161
or http://www.hungry-girl.com/newsletters/raw/1325
 



I ended up making these Brussels sprouts to go along with the glazed apricot chicken that I reviewed yesterday.  I was looking for something different to make for a side dish, and since I have only tried making Brussels sprouts once before, I thought I'd give this recipe a try.  Above the HG recipe, she states that this recipe "will win over even the non-believers who fear Brussels sprouts".  I would have to disagree.  


First of all, the recipe says to cook the Brussels sprouts and potatoes for 30 - 35 minutes.  I ended up cooking mine for 55 minutes to get them to be tender.  That's over 20 minutes longer than the recipe called for!  Perhaps it was because my Brussels sprouts were fairly large, but the potatoes were on the small side, and even they were not even close to being done at 35 minutes.


Secondly, the vegetables came out almost flavorless.  The only seasonings the recipe calls for is rosemary, garlic, and salt.  Not very exciting in the first place, but I was still optimistic these would come out good.  I even used fresh rosemary instead of dried, since I have rosemary bushes in front of my house (which I planted specifically for cooking purposes!).  

This dish came out so bland that I ended up using one of my Hungry Girl tricks to make them better.  I took a teaspoon of ranch dressing seasoning mix and sprinkled that over the vegetables.  This adds a lot of flavor for very few calories.  After mixing everything up a bit with the seasoning mix, they tasted much better.  So, unless you want to do some modifying to this recipe to make it better, I would skip it.

2 comments:

  1. I just cooked fresh Brussels sprouts for the first time. I only used a little olive oil, salt, black pepper and red pepper flakes. I roasted them for 25 minutes and they were so good.

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  2. I cooked this for the first time tonight. I can see how it tastes somewhat bland. I substituted tarragon for the rosemary since my family doesn't really like it. Then I sprinkled the final result with Tony Chachere's seasoned salt. That gave it the zing you might be looking for.

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