Brussels Sprouts With Bacon

See how they're shiny? That's because they were cooked in bacon fat.

As far as I can tell, about sixty percent of children's popular culture is devoted to disparaging brussels sprouts. Unlike spinach, they have no quirky sailor to stand up for their good name and health benefits. They are constantly fed to the sitcom family's dog. Well, it's time to grow up. Brussels sprouts are good for you, and you should give them a chance.

Cooking brussels sprouts isn't very hard. Your best bet is either to steam them or roast them. Usually, roasting wins out in paleo recipes, because it's easier to add paleo items to roasted brussels sprouts than steamed ones. This is basically a roasting recipe, but the sprouts will spend a few minutes on the cook top to get them started. Since it's also loaded with bacon, it should be a good way to tempt the vegetable-phobes into trying something new.

The quantities in this recipe are largely based on the sizes of packaging at Trader Joe's.
You can adjust them a little without really harming the recipe.

Ingredients

2 lbs brussels sprouts
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
12 oz bacon

Equipment

Oven Safe Pan (I used cast iron)
Large Bowl (recommended)


Start by placing the brussels sprouts in a large bowl. Examine them to make sure they don't have any large blemishes or pieces of the stalk still attached. Trim them if necessary. Toss them with the garlic powder, salt, and pepper.

You should basically trim away anything that isn't green or white.

Chop the bacon into small pieces.

A little larger than bacon bits, but not big enough to even be called "bite-sized"

Add the bacon to a cold, oven-safe pan and turn the heat on to medium.

Adding the bacon before heating the pan will make more of the fat render out.
That's good, because you'll need it to coat the brussels sprouts.

Cook the bacon until it is brown and crispy. Remove it from the pan and let it drain. I recommend using a few paper towels on a plate as a draining rig.

Bacon fat is a valid paleo ingredient. How awesome is that?

You may need to pour off some of the bacon fat, if your bacon was particularly fatty. You need to keep about an eighth of an inch in the bottom of the pan, but don't keep more than a quarter inch. Add the brussels sprouts to the pan and turn them carefully to coat them with the bacon fat.

Cast iron works well, because it has no problem surviving in the oven.

When you put the brussels sprouts in the pan, turn your oven on to 350. Continue cooking the sprouts on the stove top over medium heat while the oven finishes pre-heating. Turn them occasionally. When the oven has finished heating, try to arrange the brussels sprouts into a single layer in the pan. Then put the pan into the oven and let the sprouts cook at 350 for about 20 minutes.

They'll be deeply browned. They shouldn't be blackened.

Before serving, add the bacon pieces to the sprouts and toss them to combine.

Notes

• I ended up getting about a cup of fat from my bacon. I used about half of that to coat the brussels sprouts.
• You may need to add a little salt to the sprouts after cooking them. It depends on how salty your bacon was. Just taste them and decide for yourself.
• I really recommend using a cast iron pan for this. It holds heat well, and your oven will melt before it will. If you don't have one, it's worth the investment. A company called Lodge makes good cast iron products, and you can pick up one of their 10-inch skillets for about fifteen dollars.
• You may be interested to know that several studies have shown that adding fat to vegetables greatly improves your body's ability to absorb the nutrients from those vegetables.
• You may also be interested to know that bacon is awesome.

Technically Paleo Breakfast Casserole

A breakfast of turnips and bacon.
Doesn't it just make you want to go out and plow the back forty?

This recipe is a variation of the "Primal Breakfast Casserole" from Mark's Daily Apple. His version uses breakfast sausage and not much else, although he mentions that you can add other things to it. I'm adding other things to it.

Breakfast sausage is OK, but it has two problems in my mind. First, unless you go to an actual butcher and have them grind sausage for you, chances are that your breakfast sausage has various non-paleo ingredients (mainly preservatives). I might still go with it, if it weren't for the second problem with breakfast sausage. Breakfast sausage isn't bacon. Since I'm a grown man who gets to pick whatever breakfast meat he darn well pleases, I'm going to pass on the sausage and go for some good quality bacon. Trader Joe's makes my bacon of choice for technically paleo cooking, but I won't say no to pretty much any bacon.

So, this is going to be a Bacon Breakfast Casserole. I've also spiced up the original recipe with a little onion and some peppers. I think they help steer the recipe away from brick-made-of-turnips-land.

One last thing before we get started with the recipe. Turnips come in a range of sizes. The original recipe just says "3 turnips," but some of the comments mention that two were enough. If your turnips are the size of baseballs, you'll probably need three. If they're the size of softballs, you'll probably only need two.

I didn't have time to stop by Trader Joe's, so I had to settle for an alternate bacon.

Ingredients
2 large or 3 medium turnips
1 small onion
2 jalapeno peppers
16 oz bacon
4 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste

Equipment
Vegetable Peeler
Food Processor (recommended. You can use a grater instead)
Large Bowl
Pan
8x8 Inch Baking Dish
Aluminum Foil

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and then start getting your vegetables ready. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the outside layer of the turnips, and then grate them. I recommend using a food processor for convenience, but you can use a manual grater. Put the turnips into a large bowl.

The resemblance to hash browns is not only visual.
This casserole will taste a lot like it has hash browns in it.

 
Dice the onion and set it aside.

If you can find a vidalia onion, use that. If not, use a standard yellow onion.

Remove the stem and seeds from the jalapenos, so that you're only left with the outside part of the pepper. Dice the peppers and set them aside.

Removing the stem and seeds significantly reduces the heat of the peppers.

Cut the bacon into small pieces. The pieces should be larger than bacon bits, but small enough that you could still put them on a salad if you wanted to.

Add the bacon to a pan over medium-high heat and cook it until it has browned. Remove the bacon from the pan and let it drain. A paper towel on a plate is probably the easiest draining setup for the bacon.

Bacon - The King of Breakfast Meats

Add the pepper and onion to the pan. If there is a little bacon fat left in the pan, then good, because it will help keep the vegetables from sticking. Cook the pepper and onion just until the onion is translucent. You'll need to occasionally stir everything to keep the onion from burning.

Don't brown the onion. What you want to do is technically called "sweating" the onion.

Add the bacon, pepper, and onion to the bowl with the turnips.

You should give the onions and peppers a minute or two to cool down so they don't scramble the egg.

Beat the eggs in a small bowl, and add them to the large bowl with everything else. Even with the bacon, I'd recommend adding a large pinch or two of salt at this point. You should also get out your pepper grinder and add a generous sprinkling of pepper.

Mix everything together in the bowl, then transfer it into an 8x8 inch baking dish.

If you flatten the top a little, it will keep any stray turnip strands from burning.

Cover the baking dish with some aluminum foil and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Then, uncover the dish and bake for another 20 minutes to brown the top of the casserole.

The edges will be browned, just like you'd expect from any good casserole.

 Notes

• The jalapenos don't make the casserole very spicy, but you could replace them with an equal amount of red bell pepper if you're concerned about it.
• Turnips have a bad rep, probably because they're associated with hard times. The truth is that turnips are like more delicious potatoes with fewer carbs and more nutrients.
• I added about 1/2 tsp of salt and about 1/2 tsp of pepper before baking the casserole, and it came out just right. If you know that your bacon is particularly salty, you might not need that much, but because the dish is mostly turnips, you're almost definitely going to need a little extra salt.
• According to Mark's Daily Apple, you can double the recipe and put it into a 13x9 inch baking dish. The 8x8 inch version was enough for 4-6 servings, though, so I'd only double it if you've got some serious company for breakfast.
• You could try other ingredients in this if you wanted. Some good ones to try are: mushrooms, ham, spinach, or diced, cooked broccoli. Just don't add so many ingredients that you overflow the baking dish.
• Like all good casseroles, this one can be made ahead of time and reheated.

Spicy Chicken and Bacon Poppers

The chicken and peppers make it so you're not
just shamefully eating a plate of bacon.

The first recipe I'm going to recommend comes from Mark's Daily Apple. It's his Spicy Chicken and Bacon Poppers

His recipe is good, and clearly laid out. You should be able to follow it without much help from me. Just reposting Mark's recipe seems silly to me, so I'm linking to it and adding a couple of things I wanted to say about it.

First, he uses pickled pepperoncini peppers. Those are fine, and I say give them a try to see if you like them. Personally, though, I prefer to make this recipe with pickled hot cherry peppers (like these ). I just like them a little better than the pepperoncinis.

Second, Mark seems to cut his chicken breast into larger pieces than I do. It might be because I use the cherry peppers, but a chicken breast cut into 8 pieces usually yields pieces that are hard to fit in a pepper. I get more like 10 pieces out of each chicken breast, and those pieces seem to fit the peppers better. I suggest that you look at the size of your peppers, and then basically cut pieces to fit. Go ahead; I trust you to freestyle it a little.

You can season the chicken pretty much however you want, but I don't think it needs much. There's vinegar in the peppers (which are spicy), and bacon is pretty salty in general, so I usually make this without doing anything to the chicken at all. I just let the pepper and the bacon provide the flavor, but if you've got a favorite spice, try it out.

A note on grilling these: I don't recommend the "8-10 minutes per side" that Mark suggests. I think you'll end up much happier if you do quarter turns every 2 minutes and cycle through two complete turns. The bacon is less prone to burning that way.

As far as I'm concerned, you can eat these every day and be not only within the letter of the paleo law, but also within the spirit. Some people quibble about the bacon, but if you get good quality bacon (especially the uncured kind) then I say you're fine.

Just in case you don't actually know how to cook bacon.

I got the idea to do this blog when Miriam and I started eating paleo, and I'm hoping to finally really get around to it. I can eat a steak with vegetables for three meals a day, but Miriam objects to the monotony. So, I started looking around for recipes that made eating paleo a more satisfying experience. They're definitely out there, but they're scattered all over the place and some of them seem to have been written by people with no kitchen experience and permanently deranged taste buds. (Some day I'll describe the cauliflower tots.) I thought it would be nice to collect some that worked for me along with some of my own and put them in one place so that I can point to them when people ask about them. (Nobody asks about them; I just like to think that some day someone might.)

Anyway, here are the rules for what I consider "Technically Paleo"

1. No grains, dairy, legumes, potatoes, soy, or processed weird ingredients (including artificial sweeteners).
2. Natural sweetening in limited amounts. Fruit is pretty much OK in my book. My personal rule on honey is that I'm willing to eat an amount that I'd be willing to steal directly from bees. I look on maple syrup and maple sugar a little less favorably than honey and would limit them even more. I'd rather not have cane juice or agave nectar in my food, but I'm not going to completely rule them out. Stevia is gross. Corn syrup sucks.
3. The lower the net carb count in a prepared food, the more likely I am to give it the OK. For instance, Justin's Almond butter has 7g carbs per serving and is made from just almonds. They also offer a variety that has honey in it and has 8g carbs per serving. I'm OK with that level of sweetening.
4. A food can still be "Technically Paleo" even if you shouldn't eat it every day. I'll mention when something is an indulgence, not a staple, but I can't see any reason not to have the occasional cookie made with all paleo ingredients.

A final rule about my blog- This will probably only apply in the extremely unlikely case that people I don't know start reading this, but here it is. If you make a comment on a post that includes any variation on the sentiment "you should just eat real food" I will delete your comment. I hate that crap.

Here's how you cook bacon - Get some bacon (I recommend the uncured stuff from Trader Joe's. It's good.), separate it into strips, lay the strips out flat in a pan, and turn the heat to medium. Flip the strips over about every minute. Cook the strips until they look like something you want to eat. Remove them from the pan and place them on a paper towel to drain. Turn off the stove so you don't burn your house down.

Hopefully the first real recipe will be better than that.