(Slightly Burnt) Fried Brussels Sprouts with Sriracha-Honey Sauce

This is another Thanksgiving 2012 side dish for us, but it's not like we're talking about pumpkin pie... nothing about this dish screams Thanksgiving. Indeed, I think the Puritans would probably give you a week in the stocks if you brought Sriracha to the the apocryphal first Thanksgiving. As you'll note by their very dark color, they are overdone (though not as burnt as you might expect) in a somewhat worrying recent trend of me overcooking things.

The recipe comes from Food52 via Serious Eats. We used the recipe on Serious Eats, but in looking at them now I kind of wished I had consulted the one at Food52 before making them. For one thing, Food52 tells you what to do with the heart of the sprouts after peeling off leaves (just add them in with the leaves) while Serious Eats is strangely mum (thus we ended up reserving them for another use). Further, Food52 gives you a time guideline for the frying (30 seconds to a minute) while Serious Eats gives none... though neither gives a temperature for the oil for us Thermapen obsessives (I used 350).

My #1 piece of advice for this dish: USE A BIG POT WITH TALL SIDES AND A SPLATTER SCREEN. We just used a straight sided skillet (and a splatter screen) and it created a huge mess to clean up. Those Brussels sprout leaves have a lot of water in them, and will flare up right quick. This is actually the first thing I've fried that actually made me miss my defunct deep fryer... though not enough to think I really need to own one... though if you do own one these fried sprouts would really be a snap.

As it is they're not really that hard, but it is important to note there will be some residual cooking after you pull them out... so if you want to avoid leaves as black as mine I think you want to take them out as the leaves are browning on the edges. If you wait until the leaves are fully brown you'll end with some blackness. Now, they're still really delicious even when slightly burnt, but ideally I think you should see more green in the picture above... so I would err on the side of taking them out early.

We will definitely be making them again.