Sous Vide Brussels Sprout Confit

Author Notes

Brussels sprouts are delicious on their own or flavored! In this recipe, we add Chipotle tabasco to give the dish contrasting flavor. It is good throughout the year, but also as a side in our Thanksgiving Meal feature recipe.

Cooking vegetables sous vide has a number of advantages to the traditional methods of steaming or boiling. Because the vegetables cook in a sealed bag, they retain all of their nutrients and, more importantly, all of their flavor. The natural sugars in vegetables are water-soluble, and in a boiling or steaming pot, these sugars will be whisked away into the surrounding water, leaving your vegetables dull and bland. When cooked sous vide, however, those flavors stay where they belong. And, as you’d expect, there’s no guesswork or fork-probing required to know when your vegetables are properly cooked.

Vegetables are composed of plant cells, which are extremely tough and resilient compared to the cellular structure of meat. Veggies have to be tough – they can’t jump out of the ground and run away from predators. To transform hard brussel sprouts into a tender and yielding side dish, we have to break down those cell walls. Unlike meats, which typically cook between 50°C / 122°F and 65°C / 149°F, vegetables require much higher heat to soften. With a few specific exceptions, like corn and zucchini, most vegetables soften at temperatures between 80°C / 176°F and 88°C / 190°F. —Sansaire